- MUSK-OXEN. ' 475 



wool, not to be surpassed in fineness." Payer pulled out 

 the wool of three that were killed, on Kuhn Island, to 

 wrap up a number of fossils in, for transportation, and 

 took a careful sketch of one of the most stately. Its eyes 

 are particularly small. 



As the name implies, the creature is distinguished 

 according to its age, some more, some less, by the smell 

 of musk in its flesh and fat ; to which, however, one can 

 as easily accustom oneself as to the smell of train oil. 

 Its flesh, upon the whole, greatly resembles that of our 

 own ox.' The first we saw and killed was on Shannon 

 Island, in August, 1869. As we did not then know this 

 animal, we made the strangest guesses, comparing it to 

 a gnu. 



Like the reindeer, it lives on vegetable food, which is 

 scanty enough here. 



Scarcely anywhere in Greenland does the Flora suffice 

 to change the face of the soil ; at the utmost, it 

 only serves to shade it. Moss, lichen, greyish-green 

 grasses, ranunculus, saxifrage, &c., form meagre solitary 

 patches amongst the weather-beaten stone heaps. Here 

 and there the plains are covered with birch bushes, a few 

 inches high (the stems of which are often no thicker than 

 a lucifer-match), also with bilberry -bushes, but more often 

 with sallows, creeping along the ground. 



Almost every species of the Flora of the plain, especially 



* The wool of a musk-ox would fill a moderate-sized pillow. — 

 Tramnitz. 



^ The flesh of one of these animals not too old was quite free from 

 this taste, and could not be distinguished from our European beef; and 

 the milk, which I also tasted, was similar to the best European cow- 

 milk. — Tramnitz. 



