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.

    74/372 page 52
    Pope Clement VII on a mission to Poland, accom- panied by his private secretary, Paul Mucante, who left a diary, in which it is stated that the King of Poland presented the cardinal with the carcase of an aurochs from a royal preserve. This aurochs was grey, and its flesh, when eaten, was pronounced to be very like ordinary beef, but drier and tougher. Subsequently the cardinal paid a visit to the preserve, which was a huge enclosed forest about two miles from Warsaw, where various wild animals were kept; but although bison were seen, no aurochs made its appearance. In the diary distinction is drawn between aurochs, domesticated cattle, and bison. This account is of importance, as indicating that the Polish sovereign possessed a private preserve, apart from the Jaktorowka Forest,1 where both aurochs and bison were kept. Mucante further states that aurochs were still living in the Jaktorowka Forest, and that they were in much the same condition as the bison at the present day in Bielowitza, having to be supplied by their keepers in winter with fodder. As regards the ultimate fate of the Jaktorowka aurochs, it appears from contemporary documents quoted by Jarocki2 that in the year 1564 the herd still comprised thirty head, namely, twenty-two cows, three steers, and five calves, in addition to eight solitary bulls. By 1599 the number had, however, become reduced to twenty-four, and by 1602 to four, 1 In Harmsworth’s Natural History, vol. i. p- 622, I ha\e un- fortunately confounded the two. r 2 Pisma Rozmaite, vol. ii. p. 279 J see also Pusch, Rolens 1 alaonto- logic, Stuttgart, 1837, p. 200.
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