The ox and its kindred / by R. Lydekker.

  • Richard Lydekker
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ox and its kindred / by R. Lydekker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/372 page 42
    while another entry relates to a reward paid to two Prussians for a second aurochs. Whether these animals were brought alive or dead is not stated; but it is quite evident that the species was at this time living in the forests around Marienburg.1 A third entry, dated 7th April 1400, mentions one mark (equivalent to about thirteen shillings in modern money) being paid to a Lithuanian for bring- ing four aurochs from Duke Witowt, of Lithuania. That these must have been young animals is cer- tain, and it is also probable that they were tamed. They were brought with the request that they should be forwarded to Dantzic, and thence by sea to Burgundy; and there are items recording the amounts paid for freight, fodder, attendance, etc., all of which go to prove that aurochs were then regarded as valuable animals. All this indicates that aurochs were still living in Prussia and Lithuania in 1400, and probably at least as late as 1409, although in Prussia, at any rate, they were becoming scarce. By 1400, or there- abouts, the species had, however, been exterminated in western Europe, and especially Germany, as there is no reference to its existence in literature, and its name soon became confounded with that of the bison. In fact, all tradition of its former exist- ence in this part of the Continent seemed to have been completely lost. As it was a forest-dwelling species, the destruction of the forests, which had by this time taken place, is alone sufficient to account for its extinction. For as the forests were felled and cleared, and their sites converted into cultivated ground, the aurochs would be driven into more and 1 See Mertens, op. cil. pp. 62, 63.
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