The Musk-ox 93 



Company, They were the property of Capt. H. H. Bodfish of 

 the steam whaler Beluga. 



The range of the musk-ox at the present time does not 

 extend westward to within three hundred miles of the Mac- 

 kenzie delta. Any information concerning the musk-ox gath- 

 ered around Point Barrow and thence south to Bering Straits 

 and Port Clarence, has been obtained from natives who have 

 accompanied whaling ships to the East ; and all the musk-ox 

 skins that find a market in San Francisco have been purchased, 

 directly or indirectly, from the whaling ships. 



Very truly yours, 



Andrew J. Stone. 



Wherever explorers have gone into Eastern 

 Arctic North America they have found the musk- 

 ox. Lieutenant Peary, who has spent more time 

 in the Arctic than any other living man, writes 

 that he has killed musk-oxen at Cape Bryant on 

 the Northwest Coast, and at the extreme northern 

 end of Greenland Archipelago, north latitude 

 83° 39', and it appears from lack of records to the 

 contrary that they are found on all the Arctic 

 islands except, curiously enough, the Islands of 

 Spitzbergen and Franz Josef Land, where they are 

 unknown. That the musk-ox does not seem to 

 migrate on the ice from island to island as the 

 reindeer do, is another curious fact. 



Frederick Schwatka, who hunted along the 

 Arctic Coast, and one or two of the scientists, 



