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.

    64/372 page 44
    Bolemovv, Wiskitki, and Msczezow, and northwards nearly to Sochaczew, was covered with a great forest, known either, from the village Jaktorow, as the Jaktorowka forest, or, from the neighbouring district of Wiskitki, as the Wiskitki forest. In the description of Masovia by Andreas Swiecicki, published at Warsaw in 1634, it is, however, referred to as Hectorea Silva (the Hectorean forest). It has now completely disappeared. This forest was the last refuge of the aurochs. It was visited by Swiecicki, who was notary of the district of Narew, in Masovia; but he speaks only of bison, and these from another and distant forest, the Skwa forest, so named from the river Skwa, which lies between the rivers Pysz and Omulew, northwards of Narew. Fortunately a full account of the tur in the Jaktorowka forest has been preserved to us in the writings of Count, or Baron, Sigismund von Her- berstein or Herberstain (the name is spelt in both ways), who was a German diplomatist and historian, born at Wippach in i486, and who died at Vienna in 1566. As an envoy from Kaiser Maximilian and his successors, Kaiser Carl V and King Ferdinand, he had occasion to pay several visits to Russia and Poland. His first visit to Poland, to King Sigismund I, who at that time dwelt at Wilna, was undertaken from Moscow, in company with Count Wassilij Iwanow, during the years 1516, 1517, and 1518; while the second, also from Moscow, occurred in the years 1520 and 1527. In 1542 he again had occasion to visit Cracow in connection with the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of his sovereign, with Sigismund August, the Crown Prince of Poland ;
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