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.

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    more remote districts, while even there the half-wild domesticated cattle would consume much of the grass which formed their food. Hunting, too, doubtless did its share in the extermination of the aurochs, and in the driving back of the range of the bison to Lithuania and the Caucasus. As to the date when the aurochs disappeared from eastern Prussia and Lithuania there appears to be no clue; but it is practically certain that sometime after 1409, or thereabouts, the wild ox survived only in the fastnesses of Poland, at any rate so far as Europe is concerned.1 Here, as previously mentioned, it was known by the name of tur or tliur, while the bison was, and still is, termed the zubr or suber. One of the earliest records of the existence of the aurochs in Poland is a proclamation by Duke Boleslaus of Masovia, dated 1298, in which the hunting of the tur is prohibited for the future. In a second ancient document, dated 1359, Duke Ziemovit of Masovia grants permission to the Duchess of Wyszogrod to hunt all animals on his estates with the exception of tur. In both the above instances Masovia, or that portion of Poland situated in the west of the old kingdom, near the present German frontier, is given as the home of the wild ox. Here it survived longest, probably in much the same manner as the bison does in the Lithuanian forest of Bielowitza (pronounced Bielowish), namely, under the special protection of the Polish nobles. At that time the portion of Masovia lying about 33^ miles (55 kilometres) to the west-south-west of Warsaw, between the parishes of ] No importance can apparently be attached evidence of the aurochs being hunted in Bavaria in to certain alleged 1596.
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