Bible Animals. John George Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ root, Ur, Aur, or Or, that signifies a forest, or sandy waste. The root can be traced through many languages, and still survives in the Greek ορος (a mountain), the Norwegian Ore, the Icelandic Ure (the stony desert surrounding the base of the mountains); and is preserved without change in the old German Ur (a forest), and in Ur of the Chaldees. It appears also in the Ural Mountains, and also in the canton of Uri, the crest of which is an ox-head." It is worthy of mention that, in the last-mentioned place, when new magistrates are elected, two ancient and gigantic horns, remarkable for their double curvature, are carried in solemn procession.

      The presence of these horns affords a remarkable confirmation to a well-known passage in Julius Cæsars familiar "Commentaries." "The Uri are little inferior to elephants in size" ("magnitudine paullo infra elephantos"); "but are bulls in their nature, colour, and figure. Great is their strength, and great their swiftness; nor do they spare man or beast when they have caught sight of them. These, when trapped in pitfalls, the hunters diligently kill. The youths, exercising themselves by this sort of hunting, are hardened by the toil; and those among them who have killed most, bringing with them the horns as testimonials, acquire great praise. But these Uri cannot be habituated to man or made tractable, not even when young. The great size of the horns, as well as the form and quality of them, differ much from the horns of our oxen. These, when carefully selected, they ring round the edge with silver, and use them for drinking cups at their ample feasts."

      The enormous size of the horns of an ox which was in all probability the Urus is mentioned by another writer, who also alludes to their use as drinking vessels. He states that some of these horns were so large as to hold about four gallons, and then proceeds to remark that their primitive use as drinking-cups was the reason why Bacchus was represented as wearing horns, and was sometimes worshipped under the form of a bull.

      It is worthy of notice, that the Sanscrit root Ur is retained in the name of the enormous Indian ox, the Gaur, a term which is formed from two words, namely, Gau, or Ghoo, a cow, and Ur, so that the name signifies Wild Cow.

      As to the size of the animal Urus, it is evident, by measurement of certain remains, that it must have well deserved Cæsar's comparison with the elephant. A skull that is described by Cuvier gave the following measurements. Width of skull between the bases of the horn-cores (i.e. the bony projections on which the hollow horns are set), rather more than twelve inches and an half. Circumference of the cores at the base, twelve inches and nine-tenths. Length of the cores, twenty-seven inches and nine-tenths; and distances between their tips, thirty-two inches and a half.

      According to the proportions of the domesticated ox, these measurements indicated that the animal was twelve feet in length, and six feet and a half in height. Now, if the reader will sketch out on a wall an ox of these dimensions, he will appreciate the enormous dimensions of the ancient Urus, far better than can be done by merely reading figures in a book.

      But this animal, gigantic as it was, is not the largest specimen that has been discovered. A portion of an Urus skull was discovered in the Avon, at Melksham, near Bath, the horn-cores of which, as described by Mr. H. Woods, were seventeen inches and a half in circumference, thirty-six inches and a half in length, and the distance from tip to tip was thirty-nine inches. Taking the same proportions as those of the ordinary ox, the author shows that the skull in question belonged to an animal very much larger than that which was described by Cuvier. In another specimen the distance between the tips of the horn-cores was forty-two inches, but their length only thirty-six.

      Of course, the size of the horn-cores gives little indication of the dimensions of the horns themselves, and the principal point to be noticed is the shape of the core, which in some specimens, though not in all, instead of presenting the regular double curvature with which we are so familiar in our domestic oxen, first curves outwards, then bends backwards or a little downwards and forwards. This peculiarity in the shape of the horns is specially noted by Cæsar, and we may therefore receive with more security his account of their enormous size.

      A curious rabbinical legend of the Reêm is given in Lewysohn's "Zoologie des Talmuds." When the ark was complete, and all the beasts were commanded to enter, the Reêm was unable to do so, because it was too large to pass through the door. Noah and his sons therefore were obliged to tie the animal by a rope to the ark, and to tow it behind; and, in order to prevent it from being strangled, they tied the rope, not round its neck, but to its horn.

      The same writer very justly remarks that the Scriptural and Talmudical accounts of the Reêm have one decided distinction. The Scripture speaks chiefly of its fierceness, its untameable nature, its strength, and its swiftness, as its principal characteristics, while the Talmud speaks almost exclusively of its size. It was evidently the largest animal of which the writers had ever heard, and, according to Oriental wont, they exaggerated it preposterously. Whenever the Talmudical writers treat of animals with which they are personally acquainted, they are simple, straightforward, and accurate. But, as soon as they come to animals unknown to them except by hearsay, they go off into the wildest extravagances, such, for example, as asserting that the leopard is a hybrid between the wild boar and the lioness. The exaggerated statements concerning the Reêm show therefore that the animal must have been extinct long before the time of the writers.

      The question now arises, What is the distinction between the ancient Urus and our modern cattle? The answer is simple enough. The difference in the shape of the horn-cores is, as has been shown, not characteristic of the animal in general, but only of certain individuals; while other variations in the shape and length of certain bones are of too little consequence to be accepted as bases whereon to found a new genus or even species, and we may therefore assume that the Urus of Cæsar, the Reêm of Scripture, was nothing more than a very large variety of the ox, modified of course in aspect and habits by the locality in which it lived. This assumption is strengthened by the fact that Mr. Dawkins, in the treatise to which reference has already been made, has "traced the gigantic Urus from the earliest Pleistocene times through the pre-historic period at least as far as the twelfth century after Christ."

      The reader may remember that in Cæsar's brief but graphic account of the Urus, he mentions that it was hunted by those who wished to distinguish themselves. Now, on many of the sculptures of Nineveh, there are delineations of bull hunts, which show, as Mr. Layard justly observes, that the wild bull appears to have been considered scarcely less formidable and noble game than the lion. The king himself is shown as attacking it, while the warriors partake of the sport either mounted or on foot.

      The exact variety of the wild bull which is being chased is not very recognisable. It certainly is not the ordinary domestic animal, the shape approaching somewhat to that of the antelope. The body is covered with marks which are evidently intended to represent hair, though it does not follow that the hair need be thick and shaggy like that of the bison tribe.

      THE BISON

      The Bison tribe and its distinguishing marks—Its former existence in Palestine—Its general habits—Origin of its name—Its musky odour—Size and speed of the Bison—Its dangerous character when brought to bay—Its defence against the wolf—Its untameable disposition.

      A few words are now needful respecting the second animal which has been mentioned in connexion with the Reêm; namely, the Bison, or Bonassus. The Bisons are distinguishable from ordinary cattle by the thick and heavy mane which covers the neck and shoulders, and which is more conspicuous in the male than in the female. The general coating of the body is also rather different, being thick and woolly instead of lying closely to the skin like that of the other oxen. The Bison certainly inhabited Palestine, as its bones have been found in that country. It has, however, been extinct in the Holy Land for many years, and, not being an animal that is capable of withstanding the encroachments of man, it has gradually died out from the greater part of Europe and Asia, and is now to be found only in a very limited locality, chiefly in a Lithuanian forest, where it is strictly preserved, and in some parts of the Caucasus. There it still СКАЧАТЬ