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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    invisible in the position from which the picture was painted), the colour agrees precisely with Her- berstein’s description mentioned later on, and thereby renders it indisputable that adult Polish wild bulls were black. Colonel Hamilton Smith adds that the Augsburg picture agrees with a sculpture on the “stone of Clunia,” which has a Celto-Iberian inscription, and represents a hunter facing a wild bull. In addition to that of Herberstein, contemporary accounts of Polish aurochs have come down to us in the writings of Conrad Gesner1 derived from his friends Baron Bonarus and Dr. Schneeberger, the latter of whom was a physician resident in Cracow during part of the sixteenth century. From these accounts it appears that the breeding season of the aurochs occurred in September, and that the calves were born in the following May. Bull calves were at first blackish brown, but afterwards became black, with a light streak along the spine. It is also stated by Baron Bonarus that the bulls frequently paired with domesticated cows the latter being very similar in colour to their wild relatives • while, on the other hand, it is expressly mentioned that no such intercourse took place between the wild bison and domesticated cattle. The difference in the colour of the young and the adults is paralleled in the case of the Javan bantin black aKUS)• where on'y ‘he adult bulls are Ihe accounts of the aurochs do not, however end with those of Herberstein, Bonarus, and Schneeberger for in 1596 Cardinal Gaetano was dispatched “by 1 Historia Animation, cd. I6o6, pp. i4I) I42.
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