THE AUROCHS.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue LXIV, 13 September 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE AUROCHS.

In Knowledge, for May, Mr. W. Lydekker has' a paper on tho extinct wild ox of Europe, kuown as the aurochs. It died out in the seventeenth century, but the name survives in Lithuania, whore it is given to a, species of bison. When Julius Caesar was in Gau'. he found that the hoi us were used ns drinking cups. The last two horns known to science disappeared from Alsace in some unknown wny during the French Revolution. One was preserved in tho cathedral at Slrnssburg, the other in the Episcopal Palace <it Zabcrn, or Saverne. The Str/ie-burg horn was of great length (61ft), and comparatively slender. The Zabern horn (which was mounted with silver and used as a drinking horn) f wna also very large, and appnrently stouter. Its capacity wns so great that it could hold four litres of wive. The , French naturalist, Buffon, who saw tho Strassburg specimen, believed it was truly the horn of a wild ox, but his opinion is disputed by Professor Nehriug, of Berlin, who considers that, on account of its great length and slendemcss, it belonged to a domesticated Hungarian bullock. This is confirmed by an ancient tradition thnt the horu was that of one of the oxen employed in carting stones for building the cathedral. Tho Zabern horn may be confidently regarded as that of an aurochs. For throe centuries it wns the emblem of nn association known as "the biotheihood of tho horn," founded in May, 1536, by Bi«hop John yon Mdndersclieid. The mecting-plnce wns tho rustle of HoliBnrr, near Zfibern. A fossil horn was recently found in a peat bog iv Pomerania.