OVIBOVIN.E 22S 



and cylindrical tips. Goat long, shaggy, and nearly unifonu. 

 in colour. Orbits of skull tubular, nasals wide and short. 



Kowarzik divides musk-oxen into two groups, a western 

 (typified by mackenzianus, and inclinling the Bering Strait, 

 Asiatic, and European Pleistocene forms), ch-aracterised by 

 the presence of a lachrymal pit and the reductiqn of .the 

 number of teats to a single pair ; and an eastern, in which 

 there is no lachrymal depression but two pairs of teats. No 

 account is taken apparently in this classification of face- 

 glands, which are generally stated to be aljsent, but are 

 recorded by Lonnberg in a head which came from tlie area 

 inhabited by the members of Kowarzik's eastern group. 



These two groups are regarded by their describer as of 

 generic value ; for the eastern of which, as typified by the 

 Canadian 0. moscJiatus of Blainville, he has proposed the 

 name Bosovis, while he has employed Ovihos for the western 

 group. This, of course, is quite illegitimate; and if such 

 subdivision were adopted Ovihos must be retained for the 

 typical moschatus, while Prceovibos, originally proposed for a 

 Pleistocene form, would be available for the western group. 

 Their apparently frequent absence seems, however, to indicate 

 that the face-glands are on the point of vanishing in these 

 ruminants ; and if this be so, there is no reason why the 

 same thing may not hold good with regard to the lachrymal 

 pits. On this view the presence or absence of these pits 

 is of little or no classificatory value, and under no circum- 

 stance would justify the splitting of the original genus into 

 two, even if these pits were constantly absent in the eastern 

 and present in the western forms. But, as a matter of fact, 

 the alleged distinction does not seem to hold good, as some 

 of the undermentioned skulls from the eastern area appear 

 to show distinct lachrymal pits.* 



At the present day the distributional area of the genus 



* It is not easy to realise what Kowarzik means by a lachr^-mal 

 pit, as he excludes {Fauna Arctica, p. 106) what is regarded as such 

 by Lonnberg, and terms it a depression caused by the angulation of 

 the lachrymal. Moreover, after stating in two places (ojp. cit. 

 pp. 107, 120) that the eastern members of the group have no 

 lachrymal pit, he refers m a third {ihid. p. 116) to the lachrymal pit 

 being deeper in the western than in the eastern group {Lacrimale mit 

 ticfer Trdncngruhc). Eutimeyer states that the depression generally 

 existing in the lachrj-mal is undoubtedly a true /ossa laclinjmalis. 



