140 MAMMALS. 



of Greenland, tlie Musk-ox has reached that land. Otho Fabricius records the Yak, " Bos grun- 

 NiENS," as having once occvirred on the ice in the Greenland Seas ; but from his descri2)tion it is 

 plain that the animal was a Musk-ox. " I myself," says he, " once saw the injured cranium (one 

 horn only remaining), the hooves, and very long black hair, woolly at the base, of this animal, 

 which had been found upon fragments of ice in the Sea of Greenland. Certainly, however, it has 

 not its domicile in Western Greenland, nor j)erhaps in Eastern, but 1 should suppose it rather to 

 have come with ice from the shores of Northern Asia, the remains having been eaten by the Polar 

 Bear."* He does not say on which side of Greenland the specimen was met with, but from his 

 residence at Disco, as well as from the terms in which he speaks of it, it would rather appear to 

 have been on the west side, that is, the side nearest to its native habitat. It is as if he said, 

 "Notwithstanding the circumstance of this specimen ha\'ing been found on the western side, I can 

 vouch for its not being an inhabitant of that side, but I cannot speak with the same confidence of the 

 east, with which I am less familiar, but 1 should suppose," &c. It had doubtless been floated off 

 on a detached floe from ^Vmerica, and been killed and eaten by Polar Bears. 



Reichhardtf states that tlie Musk-ox comes rarely from Melville Island to Greenland, but as, 

 like Fabricius, ho gives it the name of Bos grunniens, it is perhaps not uncharitable to suspect 

 that he says so on the authority of the instance given by that author. 



It must have existed in the Old World long after the glacial epoch, and has left evidence 

 of its existence in England, France, Belgium, Germany, and most of middle Europe. Its 

 presence in these countries is fair evidence that the climate must have been colder there than now. 

 Skulls have been fomid in the drift at Merseburg, on the Lena, and at Ob, Tundra, &c. In 

 America it occurs fossil at Eschscholtz Ba}', and remains have been found on the Mississippi and 

 other southern localities, but in no deposits older than the glacial epoch. Besides the present, 

 another fossil species (Bos Pallasi, Dekay) (some authors say several fossil species) has been found 

 in various parts of North America, Siberia, and westwards, into Middle Euroi^e. Some fossil 

 remains of Oxen found in various parts of the United States, approximating in many respects to 

 the Musk Ox, have received from Dr. Leidy the generic name of Bootherium. 



2nd Section. Bisons. (Bisox.) (Map 37.) 



The North American Bison is found on the slopes and plains east of the ridgo of the Rocky 

 Mountains. According to Dr. Newberry, its range does not now extend beyond the Rocky Mountains ; 

 but there are many Indian hunters who have killed them in great numbers to the west of the 

 moimtains, on the headwaters of Salmon River, one of the tributaries of the Columbia. In his 

 "Zoological Report," already cited, he says, "While I was at the Dalles, the party of Lieut. 

 Day, U.S.A., came in from an expedition to the Upper Salmon river, and I was assured by the 

 officers that they had not only seen Indians who claimed to have killed Buffaloes there, but that in 

 many places great numbers of Buffalo skulls were still lying on the prairie. 



" This is another instance of the penetration of animals, characteristic of the Upper Missouri 

 through into the basin lying between the Rocky Mountains and Cascades. The Mule and White- 

 tailed (Virginian?) Deer, the Musk-rat, Townsend's Hare, the Striped Spermophile {S. lateralis), &c., 



* Fabricids, Otho, '* Fauna Grccnlaudica," p. 28. 1780. 



t Reichhardt, " Isis," 1848, s. 248. Scumaroa'.s " Geograph. Verbreitung," 185.3, 370. 



