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Updated: May 5, 2025
The Aurochs is the European Bison, and is one of the largest and noblest of the genus. He stands six feet high at the shoulders, has two sorts of hair, one short, soft, and woolly, and the other long, rough, and covering the upper part and sides of the head; the chest, neck and shoulders, forming an enormous mane, sometimes a foot long.
When any species becomes very rare, close interbreeding will help to exterminate it; authors have thought that this comes into play in accounting for the deterioration of the aurochs in Lithuania, of red deer in Scotland and of bears in Norway, etc.
Between the ancient aurochs and the more highly cultivated of its descendants, the difference is as great as that which separates any other of our captive animals from their wild ancestors. In size, shape, in flesh-and milk-giving qualities, the departure from the old form of the wilderness is remarkable.
Out of the wood of idols crucifixes are erected along the highways. Chapels and abbeys and cathedrals rise where the aurochs was hunted. Sturdy barbarians bend the knee at the shrines of saints. Hosts set out to see the land where the Lord had walked and suffered, and brave all dangers and hardships to wrest its possession from infidel hands.
Several aurochs, made furious by being goaded with pointed sticks, or pricked by spears, were to rush out and trample the poor victims to death. The heart of the beautiful Fos-te-di-na, who had heard the songs of the singer of faith in the one God and love for his creatures, was deeply touched. She resolved to set the captives free. Being a king's daughter, she was brave as a man.
Jelnik, honor me, please, by considering my instincts and manners infinitely worse than Doctor Geddes's. I, Mr. Jelnik, at this instant feel within me the instincts of a cave man and I hone for the thigh-bone of an aurochs to prove it to you. Do you know what I think of you, Mr. Jelnik? I consider you a man without conscience and without scruples, sir!" "My faith!
The castle has a large throne room and ball-room; in the hall is a stuffed aurochs killed by the Emperor. The aurochs is a species of buffalo greatly resembling those which used to roam our western prairies. The breed has been preserved on certain great estates in eastern Germany and in the hunting forests of the Czar in the neighbourhood of Warsaw.
The inevitable whale's skeleton a small sperm whale hung from the ceiling, on massive iron supports. The side of the room nearest the door was occupied by a long glass case filled with skeletons of animals, all diseased, deformed or abnormal. On the floor-space under the whale stood the skeletons of a camel and an aurochs.
Here, on holidays, they gave their prisoners of war to the wild beasts, for the amusement of thousands of the people. The Frisians could get no lions or tigers, for these fierce brutes live in hot countries; but they sent hundreds of hunters into the woods for many miles around. These bold fellows drove the deer, bears, wolves, and the aurochs within an ever narrowing circle towards the pits.
Still it is more natural, if not inevitable, to infer that, if the aurochs of that olden time were the ancestors of the aurochs of the Lithuanian forests, so likewise were the men of that age the ancestors of the present human races.
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