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.

    78/372 page 56
    That the steer shown in the illustration is intended to represent an aurochs may be considered certain ; but, seeing that it does not apparently occur in the original edition, there may be a doubt as to whether it was drawn from the actual specimen. From this illustration Dr. L. Adametz1 has, however, suggested that the animal depicted represents a small, short- horned race of the aurochs, which was the ancestral type of the so-called Celtic shorthorn, to which fuller reference is made in the next chapter. Herberstein’s account indicates, however, that the Polish aurochs was a huge beast; and it is practically certain that there would not be two races of the species inhabiting the same area. Moreover, as Dr. Hilzheimer has pointed out, the horns of the dead animal indicate an immature animal; and, whether or no the picture was drawn direct from the actual specimen, it seems most probable that the three aurochs captured by the order of the Polish king were young steers, since it would have been a very difficult task at that date to capture and bring to Cracow three adult bulls. Finally, reference may be made to an account of an aurochs-hunt by Gedymin, Duke of Lithuania, in the year 1320, near Swintoroh, in which an adult bull was killed, which will be found in C. Wiirzback’s Die Sprichtworter der Polen, Vienna, 1852, 2nd ed.2 The horns of this animal were in existence as drinking-vessels in 1429. 1 “ Studien liber Bos (brachyceros) europccus, die wilde Stammform der Brachyceros - Rassen des europaischen Hausrindes,” Journ. fur Ldndwirtschaft, 1889, p. 269, and “ Uber das in der Ulrich von Richentalschen Chronik befindlichc Bildnis des Auerochsen,” Zcits. f. landwirtschaft. Versuckswesen in Osterreich, 1908, 3 pp. 2 Vide Hilzheimer, op. cit. p. 74.
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