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Although the accounts left us by the ancients, respecting the Aurochs, the Rein-deer, and Elk, are all mingled with fable, they are yet sufficient to prove that these animals were in some degree known to them, but that the reports which had reached them, had been communicated by ignorant people, and had not been corrected by a judicious examination[54]. These animals still inhabit the countries which the ancients assigned to them; and have only disappeared in such of them as have been too much cultivated for their habits. The aurochs[55] and elk still exist in the forests of Lithuania, which were formerly continuous with the great Hercynian Forest. The former of these animals still occurs in the northern parts of Greece, as it did in the days of Pausanias. The rein-deer inhabits the snowy regions of the north, where it always had its abode; it changes its colour, not at pleasure, but according to the change of the seasons. It was in consequence of mistakes scarcely excusable, that it was imagined to have occurred in the Pyrenees in the fourteenth century[56].