The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1900-05-21

numbers. Bison Bonassus or EuropSe-
us bears a general resemblance to, but
iss specifically different from, his Amer
lean cousin, named after that continent,
which also has almost disappeared from
the earth during the last fifty or Sixty
years. The American beast wandered
over the prairies, while the European
species is a lover of the forest. But the
aurochs, or urus, was a very different
creature, and must have been not very
unlike one Of the long-horned oxen
which may be seen to-day in the low
lands of Italy. 1t was a large and for
midable beast; it's horns had slight
double curvature, and attained to
great length, for skulls have been found
in which the bony cores measure forty
two inches from tip to tip. That as Mr..
Lydekker states in the pages Of The
Royal Natural History" would mean
that the points of the sheaths, the horns
proper must have been rather over four
feet apart, and a greater length than
this was sometimes attained. They APP
pear to have been occasionally used as
drinking cups, and such a horn of ale
would not be quickly drained.
The aurochs is related to certain Ash
attic forms of oxen, and makes its APP
pearance in Europe, If not at the same
epoch, only little later than the bison,
but was not less widely spread, for it
wandered as far north as Scandinavia
and Russia, and southwark to Italy,
Greece and even Algeria. 1T has been
found in Palestine, where some writer's
have identified it with the reem or uni
Of no NarcipD, hI1t
how far eastward it extended has not
yet been ascertained. Its remains, es-
pecially ~in caves, are associated with
the wild horse, the brown and the griz-
ely bears, the lion, the spotted hyena,
two species both of rhinoceros and of
elephant, and number of other ami
mails, some still living in Europe. Such
as We're good for food man hunted; such
as We're eaters of flesh perhaps, some
times hunted him. A savage armed
with nothing better than rudely Clipped
spearheads must have often Jared bad
ly when the lion was roaring after his
prey, and at first the struggle for exist
ence between man and the wild beasts
must have been protracted and severe.
But that lie could slay the aurochs we
learn from remains found at Laugerie
Basse, These cave men Of central
France, though they were not so far ad-
vanced in mechanical arts as to emooth
their weapons of stone, could carve
bones or antlers into shapes of animals,
or incise on them outline sketches, rude,
but fairly accurate One such shows an
aurochs quietly feeding, while hunter,
who has crept up behind him. is just.
throwing his spear The form of the
horns Identifies the animal but that the
bison was also known is proved by an
equally characteristic sketch of two
heads on a second carving. On the 9TH
err side of it a hunter is attacking a
wild horse
Some of the big game which these
early races of men hunted apparently
vanished from Europe almost simulta-
neously with them, for what was their
fate and where on earth they are now
represented. unless by the Esquimaux,
we cannot tell. The next race, at any
rate the neolithic folk, as they are now
called, whose weapons and tools, made
after more elaborate patterns, are often
polished, seem to have come as con-
querors. Perhaps the newcomers fore
ed w llldl Tue dJpI4SlueS AiilSHt I've iAsV
to inconvenient racial questions, so, as
Tacitus says, they made solitude,
and called it peace. But with the old
err race several of the larger wild ami
mails disappeared, at any rate from the
British Isles if not from northwestern
Europe-the mammoth and the wolly
rhinoceros. the hippopotamus, the sabre
toothed tiger, which had already become
extremely rare If not extinct; perhaps,
also, the lion and the hyena
They may have disappeared from our
islands because a general sinking Of the
land replaced many broad grassy or
tree clad plains with shallow seas and
completed the severance of Britain from
the continent, This change and the in
coming of better armed and more cum
ming race Of hunters may have turned
the scale distinctly in man sfavor. Still
some big game remained for the Bri-
tain of that age was very different from
that which we inhabit No towns, only
scattered villages. large districts of for
est and marsh land, such as were the
backwoods Of Canada and still are
some parts of central Africa. Here wild
animals found ample protection, and
had no more TO dread from man than
from the wolf or the lynx. SO the rein
deer remained, at any rate in the north
perhaps, also. the so-called Irish elk to-
gether with the bison and the aurochs.
Some thirty years ago skull of the
latter was dug out of Cambridgeshre
fen, and in it a stone axe was found
embedded in the forehead, 1t was
broken off short apparently snapped by
striking against the bony orbit of the
eye, as if the animal had been struck
by a blow delivered from one side.-
London Standard.