The suburban citizen. (Washington, D.C.) 1891-1902, 1900-09-22
PREHISTORIC ANIMALS.
GAME wRSca4 PRISTINE MAN WAS
WONT no HUNT.

lsueu from EUROPE ulilOSl ollhhAAAh
eously with them, for what was their
fate, and where on the earth they are
now represented, unless by the Esqul-
maux, 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 pat
terms, are often polished, seem to have
come as conquerors Perhaps the
newcomers foresaw that the aborig-
ines might give rise to inconvenient
racial questions, so, as Tacitus says,
"they made a solitude, and called it
peace"
But with the older race several OF
the larger wild animals disappeared,
at any rate from the British Isles If
not from Northwestern Europe. The
mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros,
the hippopotamus, the saber-toothed
tiger, which had already become eX-
lremely rare, If not extinct; perhaps,
also, the lion and hyena. They may
have disappeared from our islands be-
cause 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 incoming of
better-armed and more cunning
race of hunters, may have turned the
scale distinctly in mans favor Stll
some big game remained, for the
Britain of that age was very different
from that which we inhabit No
towns, only scattered villages; large
districts of forest and marsh land.
such as were the baclwoOds of Can
ada, and still are some parts of Cen
trail Africa. Here wild animals found
ample protection, and had no more to
dread from man than man from the
wolf or the lynx. SO the reindeer re-
manned, at any rate, in the North;
perhaps, also, the so-called Irish elk,
together with the bison and the au-
rochs. Some thirty years ago n skull
of the latter was dug out of a Cam
bridgeshire fen, and in it stone axe
was found lmbedded i'm 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 blow delivered from
one side.
This, however, is by no means the
only proof that the NeOlithic Briton
hunted the aurochs. Its bones and
teeth have been found at Cissbury
Camp, and it's remains around the pile
dwelling in Barton Mere, near Bury
st. Edmunds, shows that it survived
into the Bronze Age. 1t was, however,
already rare and probably had dlsap-
peared when Caesar landed. But 1t
fingered much longer on the Cont
nent, for extensive regions in Central
Europe were still almost wholly COW
cred by forests, the names of which
survive-as in the case of our own
Weald-in the "walds' sprinkled over
the modern maps of Germany.
In the great Hercynian Forest the
aurochs existed in the days of julius
Caesar, as he writes in his Gallo War;
In the sixth century, it occurred,
though rarely in the province Of
Maine, and was hunted in the ninth
by Charles the Great in the forests
near Aachen. A century later it must
have been living in Switzerland, for
the chronicles Of an Abbey make men
ton Of its flesh. The aurochs existed
near Worms in the twelfth century,
for the Staying Of four is mentioned
In the Nibelungen Lied, and it is gen
orally believed to have fingered in Ger
many till the sixteenth or possible even
the seventeenth century.
But has it left any descendants? Our
domestic cattle, no doubt, have sprung
from q wild stock, but probably have
more than one origin. Some may be
traced back to the Celtic ,shorthorn
(Bos longifrons), already dOmesticated
IN Neolithic times. and difficult to con
uect with the aurochs; for it was much
smaller, with different-shaped head,
and whether 1t was originally wild in
Europe is matter of dispute. At the
present day it is most nearly repre-
sented in that state by some Of the
smaller oxen Of Southern Asia, but its
pedigree cannot be traced with GER
tainty. At any rate, it remained the
sole domestic OK in Britain till the En-
glish conquest, ana is regarded by
some as the ancestor Of our small
Welsh and Highland cattle.
Another domestic variety or species
In prehistoric times was called Bos
frontosus, from peculiar bony prom
inence between the horn cores, which
are rather small. Its pedigree also
Is uncertain, but probably it is more
nearly related to the Celtic shorthorn
than to the aurochs. In closer ALI
ance with the latter is a third variety
found in the Swiss pile dwellings with
the other two. and called Bos taurus,
which probably has its mark on more
than one breed Of our domestic cattle
The English invaders seem to have
brought with them a breed Of white
cattle with red ears, which can be
traced in all parts of Britain occupied
by their masters, and were probably
introduced into Ireland by the Nor
weglans and Danes.
Some writers have claimed the wild