Greenland Musk-Ox 145 



encountered some physical obstacle, such as the glaciers of Cape Farewell, 

 capable ot barring their further progress. Probably the same has been the 

 case also on the western coast, where the great glaciers debouching into 

 Melville Bay would appear to have set a limit to the wanderings of the 

 animal in this direction. "The distribution ot the musk-ox along the 

 shores ot Greenland," continues the same writer, " covers an immense 

 coast-line ; we have traced it from Polaris Bay, on the north-west side of 

 Greenland, from about 8i" north to Independence Bay on the north-east 

 coast in about the same latitude, and from there as far south as the seventieth 

 parallel. On the east coast of Greenland the range of the musk-ox in a 

 line drawn over the map from north to south embraces at least 700 

 geographical miles." 



The British Museum possesses skulls of the existing musk-ox from the 

 frozen superficial deposits of Eschscholtz Bay, Alaska, found in company 

 with those of the Plistocene bison and the mammoth. 



The Russian naturalist Pallas discovered two skulls of the musk-ox in 

 the superficial deposits of Northern Asia, one on the banks of the Obi, and 

 the other farther north in the Siberian tundra. It was these specimens 

 that were mentioned by Holl as Bos moschatiis^ and much later on by De 

 Kay as Bos pallasi. Subsequently other remains were discovered by the 

 late Prof. Lartet in Perigord, in association with remains of man, the 

 reindeer, and the bison. They have also been found in various parts of 

 Central Europe, notably near Ulm, in Wlirtemberg, in association with 

 bones of the reindeer, the mammoth, and the woolly rhinoceros. Similar 

 remains have been disinterred from the Plistocene gravels of several districts 

 of England, such as those of Maidenhead, Bromley, Freshfield near Bath, 

 and Barnwood near Gloucester, as well as from the brick-earths of the 

 Thames Valley at Crayford in Kent. In 1883 Mr. W. B. Dawkins described 

 the imperfect skull of a musk-ox found at Triniingham which there seems 

 every probability was derived from the Norfolk forest-bed, forming the 



