The Zoology of North American Big Game 



Cosoryx — small deer-like animals with non-decidu- 

 ous horns, probably covered with hair, and molars 

 of somewhat bovine type — may have been ancestral 

 to it, but this is little more than a speculation. 

 What is certain is that Antilocapra is now a com- 

 pletely isolated form, fully entitled to rank as a 

 family all by itself. 



In the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) , or "sheep- 

 ox," as the generic name given by Blainville has it, 

 we meet with another strange and lonely form 

 which has contributed its full share to the prob- 

 lems of systematic zoology. Its remote and inac- 

 cessible range has greatly retarded knowledge of 

 its structure, and it is only within the last three 

 years that acquaintance has been made with its soft 

 anatomy, and at the same time with a maze of re- 

 semblances and differences toward other ruminants, 

 that perhaps more than equals the irregularities of 

 the prong-buck. But unlike that species, there is 

 in the musk-ox no extreme modification, such as a 

 deciduous horn, to separate it distinctly from the 

 rest of the family. A recapitulation of these dif- 

 ferences would be too minutely technical for inser- 

 tion here, and it must be enough to say that while 

 it cannot be assigned to either group, yet in the 

 distribution of hair on the muzzle, in the presence 

 of a small suborbital gland, in shortness of tail and 



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