THE MACKENZIE BASIN 59 



poplars, Banksian pine and balsam fir. With these are asso- 

 ciated, generally in the form of undergrowth, a variety of 

 shrubs, some of which have a continuous distribution through 

 the forest zone, whereas others are more or less restricted 

 in range. But the whole region between Hudson Bay and 

 the mouth of the Mackenzie River is by no means all forested. 

 North of a line drawn from the mouth of the Churchill River 

 to the mouth of the Mackenzie, the country belongs to what 

 are known as the " barren-grounds," which have already been 

 alluded to in previous chapters. They are largely covered 

 with short grass, moss and small flowering plants interspersed 

 with patches of sedgy or peaty soil on which grow Labrador 

 tea, crowberries, dwarf birches, and willows. Both flora 

 and fauna, in fact, remind us vividly of certain parts of Green- 

 land and Labrador. 



The only large mammals, as in Greenland, are the barren- 

 ground caribou and the musk ox. The former is simply 

 spoken of as the " deer " by the northern hunters. Zoologi- 

 cally it belongs to the barren-ground form (Rangifer arcticus) 

 which, as I remarked, seems to be closely allied to the Green- 

 land reindeer. It is not so with the musk ox, as Dr. Kowarzik 

 has recently shown. After a very careful and extended ex- 

 amination of a number of skins and skulls of musk oxen 

 from this region, he was able to show that they differed from 

 those living elsewhere by the possession of a deep lachrymal 

 pit and two mammary glands. The Greenland musk ox, which 

 belongs to the eastern group, has no lachrymal pit and four 

 mammary glands. There are other minor differences clearly 

 proving that Dr. Kowarzik's * Ovibos moschatus macken- 

 zianus is much more than a mere race. It is, in fact, a species 

 perfectly distinct from the one inhabiting Greenland. In 

 spite of these differences, the casual observer is easily misled 

 by the apparent external resemblances among all the musk 

 oxen. 



The general similarity in the fauna of the Mackenzie 

 region and that of Greenland is by no means super- 

 ficial, and holds good to some extent even among the smaller 

 kinds of beasts. The arctic hare seems much like the Green- 



* Kowarzik, E., " Der Moschusochs und seine Rassen," p. 120. 



