THE ZOOLOGIST

No. 217.-January, 1895.

ON THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE EUROPEAN AND CAUCASIAN BISON.*

BY BERNARD LANGKAVEL (OF HAMBURG).

THE narrow limits of this article preclude any mention of the Bison in prehistoric times. Such information concerning it as history affords has been already collected by Brehm in his 'Tierleben.' In remote historic times it was to be found not only in Central Europe, but in Spain, throughout Pannonia, and in Thrace, where the Cossack-like Pæonian hunters were transformed into centaurs by Greek travellers' tales. †

Frequent wars, especially the devastating Thirty-Years War, drove these animals out of Germany further north and east; their numbers diminished, the cows being often barren for three or four years. I

In Pomerania the last one was shot by Duke Wratislaw V. about the middle of the 14th century, and one of its horns was used first as a drinking-cup, and then as a reliquary in the Cathedral of Cammin. §

When Henry IV. of England visited Prussia in 1390-91, a Bison and two Bears were presented to him (Preussisches

* Translated from the German in 'Der Zoologische Garten' (Frankfurta-M.), 1894, pp. 13-17, 43-49.

Gaudry, 'Verfahren der Säugetiere in Europa,' p. 169; Keller, 'Tiere des Klass. Altertums,' pp. 53, 56.

'Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung,' v. p. 307; Günther, 'Der Harz,' p. 582; 'Zoologische Garten,' vol. ix. p. 64; xviii. p. 229; xxi. p. 219.

§ Zoologische Garten,' viii. p. 307; xiv. p. 113; Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, Berlin,' xix. p. 402.

ZOOLOGIST, THIRD SERIES, VOL. XIX.-JAN. 1895.

B

Jahrbuch,' 1892, p. 303). The breed survived for some time in
the pine forests of Johannisburg, together with Elk, Bears, and
wild Horses; but no mention of it occurs in the hunting
literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, while in the 18th
century Fleming (Der vollkommene Teutsche Jäger') and Döbel
(Neu eröffnete Jägerpraktike') only briefly allude to it as having
entirely disappeared from Germany by the end of the previous
century.

Lithuania, of which the ancients had some knowledge (see
Pallas, 'Neue Nordische Beiträge, I. p. 1, and my observations on
Bonasus and Bos in the Index to Aristotle published by the
Berlin Academy in 1870), was then the only district in the north
which sheltered it, as mentioned by Baron von Herberstein in a
much-contested passage. Besides the authors mentioned in my
Essay, I quoted Wiegmann's Archiv für Naturgeschichte,' 1839,
pp. 75-78; 1841, pp. 55, 56; 1847, p. 225; Erman's ' Archiv,' 1852,
pp. 30-40; 'Die Gartenlaube,' 1860, p. 725; 'Neue Deutsche
Jagd-Zeitung,' v. pp. 289, 297, 306, 314; vi. p. 134, &c. . . .
Schiller Tietz, in his brochure Inzucht und Consanguinität,' has
expressed the view held by many that animals which are confined
in a comparatively small space will diminish in size. For example,
the Bison is said to have formerly weighed as much as 1000
kilos., but now only from 500 to 600 kilos.

According to the Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung' (xiii. p. 196),
Bison in the forest of Bialowicza generally weigh about 600 kilos.,
and several weighed 20 cwt (v. p. 307). Formerly they were 7 ft.
high, 10 to 12 ft. in length, and weighed from 19 to 22 cwt. One
killed in 1595 by Johann Sigismund of Prussia weighed 19 cwt.,
or 100 lbs. less than our old friend in the Berlin Zoological
Gardens. The cows, which are not fully matured until they are

*Hagen, 'Geschichte des preussischen Auers,' 1819.

Carus, 'Geschichte der Zoologie,' p. 337; 'Zoologische Garten,' viii.

p. 3.
The way in which deer and other wild animals were formerly weighed
may be illustrated by the following quotation from an article by J. E. H. on
the Hunting Trophies in the German Exhibition of 1891 (The Field,' July
4th and 18th, 1891):-"Here also we may note two other objects which
figure in the old paintings above referred to, and which perhaps served as
actual models to the artist-namely, the game weighing-machine and the
game-carrier. The former may be described as a cross-beam supported on

six or seven years old, weigh considerably less. Reports as to the weight of these animals date from a few centuries back, but are very scattered even at the present day.

Under these circumstances, is it right to assume that a diminution in size has been caused by in-breeding amongst many hundred of these animals in such an extensive area as that of Bialowicza ?

In our Zoological Gardens the conditions for many of the animals are quite different. Omitting all description of the structural and osteological details, I will only allude to Baumer's Essay of 1824, in which he attributes to the Bison two ribs. more than are possessed by the domestic cow. See Owen, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1848, p. 129, and Dolmatoff, ib. iii. p. 48. Ludwig ('Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung,' v. p. 325) and others have written about its horns (Die Natur,' 1888, p. 215). According to Dr. A. Nehring, Bison europeus has a shorter and more shapely metatarsus than Bos primigenius.* The skulls of their American relative are said to make comfortable seats in Indian wigwams, and those of the Urus and Bison were used by the European pile-dwellers of old; for, as Victor von Scheffel sings in 'Gaudeamus':

"If I build my small hut in the open

The Aurochs will stamp it to pieces."

Bison skins were used for clothing in the earliest times, and in Hungary in the 17th century were appropriated to various purposes.

Wild, the head forester at Pless, observed that the cows were in heat at all seasons and were invariably covered by the oldest bulls. The period of gestation is 274 days, and calves are born at all times of year, doing well even when there is 20° of cold.

It has often been said that there is such antipathy between the Bison and the domestic cow that they will not interbreed, t

high trestles, through which passes an iron bar terminated by a large hook. From this hook the deer was suspended by all four legs lashed together, and raised from the ground by a windlass until its weight was indicated on a scale. The game-carrier consists of a couple of fir-poles laid horizontally about a yard apart, with a hammock of strong netting lashed between them. On this the stricken deer was laid and transported."-ED.

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie,' xx. p. 222.

+ Eichwald, 'Beschreibung von Littauen,' p. 37.

and that the former is untamable; * but Count Walicki has proved the contrary by crossing the Bison with his Swiss

COWS.

Old Sulzer, in his Geschichte des transalpinischen Daciens,' 1781 (i. p. 71), gives an account of a bull Bison "with a long mane and short legs," which followed a cow into her stall on several evenings, an incident which Brehm rightly attributes to "amorousness" overcoming natural dislike. Brehm also alludes to the Bison gradually becoming tame, and following people for food, as at Bialowicza for example; while Count Franz Lazár reported that in 1740 (or as others say in 1770) he drove to the Diet at Hermannstadt with a beautiful team of Bison from the Gyergyoer Forest. +

Whether the indomiti boves driven by Oriental princes were Bison or wild cattle is uncertain. In Clothair's time the King drove with oxen to the public assemblies. The Gothic rulers even drove stags, and so late as the beginning of the present century a head forester near Stettin had a team of four of these animals.

Bison were for a long time to be found in the Hungarian Siebenbürgen. 'Der Weidmann,' quoting from a work by Stefan König ('Die Geschichte der Jagd in Ungarn'), which was shortly to appear, states that the last Bison was killed by a clever crossbow shooter in the forest of Sohl, Upper Hungary, in the reign of King Mathias (1458-1490); according to Alex. von Ujfalvy, the last was killed at Borgo on the Play Höhe in the Siebenbürgen in 1762; while others report that in 1775 some still existed in the Udwárhelyer Komitat.

Sulzer (op. cit. p. 54) states that Prince Kantemir in describing Moldavia mentioned an animal called Zimbr (i. e. Zubr), which neither he (Sulzer) nor any one else had seen, and which might have been a Buffalo (ein Büffel). Eichwald at first supposed that

a record of the year 1582 of "Zumbro bestiæ feræ in Tauroscythia" had reference to the Crimea, but afterwards translated

* Oscar Schmidt, Die Säugethiere,' p. 169.

Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung,' xiii. p. 176; and 'Der Weidmann,' xxiv. p. 432.

See Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie,' p. 35; and Victor Hehn's wellknown work, pp. 40, 41, 61, 109.

Tauroscythia to mean Moldavia.* Edward von Czynk assigns a much later period for the existence of the Bison in the forests of Csik, Udwárhely, and Gyergyo, giving 1814 as the year of the last one's death in the Siebenbürgen.t

Numbers were said to inhabit the Gyergyo mountains in 1534, and even a century later.

Mecklenburg has an ox's head on its coat of arms; the family of Count Was in Hungary a Bison's head; while the Lazár family above referred to bears upon its shield a Bison pierced by an arrow. We may add that a print published by Anton Wied of Danzig in 1555 represents a Urus (Bison) being killed with a long spear.

In the Russian empire the Bison is only found wild in two districts. To deal first with the most easterly, the story of the Argonauts and their fire-breathing bulls (reminding one strongly of the Greek account of the African Gnu) is probably the earliest mention of the Bison in the Caucasus, that difficult country to cross, which entirely blocks the narrow strip of land which separates the Black Sea from the Caspian. I imagine these "fire-breathing" animals to be Bison, whose defiant eyes when angry become glowing red.

The earliest reliable information about this animal dates. probably from the year 1633, when mention is made of wild Buffaloes on the borders of Abkasia. §

The fact that so little has been heard of the animal since that time may be accounted for in two ways. Being very alert as well as very shy, and clever in hiding from its pursuers when once warned, it may have gradually withdrawn into the higher parts of the mountain range, where it would be safe. Fischer Sigwart, in his interesting little work on mountains as a refuge for wild animals, enumerates the European mammalia which eventually found there the only conditions favourable to their existence; the European Bison, which gradually died out, is not one of these. The Caucasian animal, however, found a cool retreat there in

* 'Beiträge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reichs,' 1883, vi. p. 16. Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung,' xiii. p. 196; Zoologische Garten,' 1889, p. 281.

Keller, Tiere des Klass. Altertums,' p. 57.

§ Eichwald, Beiträge zur Kenntniss des russischen Reichs,' vi. p. 16. Das Gebirge ein Rückzugsgebiet für die Tierwel