138 A7//o/ New M<nnm<ds. 



musk-oxen, four polar bears and some seals (the last probably captured 

 near the coast, before the ship arrived), all of which were secured for the 

 Field Columbian Museum. The skins of the oxen were frozen and the 

 heads and legs had never been skinned, and this process had to be per 

 formed after their arrival at the Museum. This, perhaps, was fortunate, as 

 no mistake could be made in keeping the right skull and skin together. 



It was recognized that they were a queer looking lot, like 0. moschatus 

 and yet unlike, but, for lack of proper material to compare with them and 

 a conservative unwillingness to unnecessarily increase the number of 

 species, they were considered simply as the ordinary musk-ox, until more 

 evidence to the contrary was available, A few years after, Mr. Lydekker 

 described a new form from Greenland as 0. m.wardi,b\it, on comparing his 

 description with the Museum specimens it was found to disagree with them 

 in various ways. At length Dr. Allen received examples of 0. m. wardi 

 collected by Peary, and in the mean time the Field Museum had secured 

 five adult specimens of the real 0. moschatus, obtained 160 miles north of 

 Fort Resolution, Great Slave Lake, and the opportunity of comparing the 

 eastern and western forms with these undetermined specimens had at 

 length, after long waiting, arrived. 



While great numbers of the skins of musk-oxen have been received from 

 the Arctic regions every year, comparatively few have found their way into 

 the collections of museums. The chief reason for this is that they come 

 as flat skins suitable for carriage robes or to be made into rugs, and usually 

 without head or skull. And sometimes when these are brought with the 

 skin, the locality where the animal was killed is unknown and the speci 

 men's specific value is consequently non-existent, or seriously impaired. 

 Fortunately the locality of the specimens in the Museum collection are 

 fairly well known, for all were obtained by parties sent out expressly to 

 obtain the animals and preserve them for museum exhibits, and while the 

 exact location where the Eskimos procured the specimens of 0. m. niplmcus 

 can not be given, we know from their statement that they, the natives, 

 went about 600 miles inland from where they met the ships, to the north 

 ward of Hudson Bay. 



The new subspecies is the intermediate of the two forms previously de 

 scribed, agreeing with either one or the other in certain particulars and 

 differing from both in others. The jet black pelage is very striking when 

 placed beside the brown animals of the other forms and makes them con 

 spicuously different, while the narrow, whitish band on top of the head 

 exhibits a leaning toward wardi, but the dark legs again give an affinity to 

 moscJtalus, The shape of the horns is a compromise between the two, more 

 spreading and farther from the head than those of moschatus, but less wide 

 and more confined to the head than those of wardi. The differences ex 

 hibited by the skulls have been already mentioned, and it would appear 

 that the characters there described and the jet black pelage sufficiently in 

 dicate this animal's claims to a distinct subspecific rank. 



The brown pelage of the old bull and cow may be the result of age, for 

 it can not be deemed seasonal as all the specimens were obtained at the 

 same time, and if it represented the summer coat, the others, we naturally 



