238 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



haps a hundred willow ptarmigan. From the fact that no females 

 appeared, it is probable that ptarmigan were already nesting. No 

 ravens or hawks were noticed the first part of the summer, al- 

 though we now know that both ravens and golden eagles are na- 

 tive to the vicinity at this time of year. 



We have now come to a point where we must mention an animal 

 that touches this story frequently later on, the "musk ox." And 

 I don't think we had better call him "musk ox" in the rest of the 

 book. The name is in a sense libelous of him, as it is in a sense 

 deceptive to the reader. 



I have made no researches to discover who first perpetrated the 

 blunder of calling him "musk ox." It may have been some early 

 English navigator who was a better sailor than zoologist and mis- 

 identified him with the musk deer of Asia. Or possibly he was more 

 of a trader than he was a scientist and wanted to lead people to 

 believe that he had discovered a new commercial source of the 

 costly musk perfume of our ancestors — a trick with many parallels 

 in early exploration, of which none is more interesting than Eric 

 the Red's frank admission that he named Greenland so in order 

 to induce his fellow Norsemen to colonize it. 



But once under the view of keen-eyed scientists the "musk ox" 

 (and now we are through with the word, for we can exchange it for 

 a better) got the fairly truthful descriptive name of ovibos, or sheep- 

 cow. This is what he is to the casual view — a cow (or bull) with a 

 coat of wool. For a description of his peculiarities and his excep- 

 tional merits from the point of view of usefulness to us humans, we 

 shall wait for the account of that period of our adventures when 

 he was our intimate and (so far as we would let him) friendly 

 associate. 



For the present I shall merely convey a hint of some of many 

 reasons for refusing to imply by a misnomer that this animal has 

 attributes that are really foreign to him. Sverdrup * says: "Having 

 shot many of these animals and drunk the milk of the cows, with- 

 out ever detecting the flavour of musk from which they are sup- 

 posed to derive their name, I have decided to call them in this book 

 polar oxen." We shall in general follow Sverdrup, and the great 

 British explorers of the middle century who usually referred to these 

 animals as "cattle."** It requires inhibition to refrain from using 



♦ "New Land," by Otto Sverdrup, London, 1904. See footnote to p. 35 of 

 Vol. I. 



** See the various journals of the Franklin Search as printed in the British 

 Parliamentary Blue Books. 



