THE MUSK OX 105 



pictures a troop of musk oxen adding life and 

 character to the misty expanse of white, their dusky 

 forms dotted over the snowfield as they crop the 

 lichen wherever the snow has drifted from the icy 

 ridges. 



Picture then a troop of musk oxen, drawn up on 

 the top of a bluff, like Highland cattle in a picture 

 by Landseer. The curving horns and shaggy coats 

 of the animals give them a rugged picturesqueness 

 well matched by the savage desolation of the Arctic ; 

 their breath rises like steam in the crystal-clear 

 atmosphere. In the foreground a white hare crops 

 the scanty herbage ; in the rocky gorge far below a 

 snowy owl floats on noiseless pinions through a 

 world of mist and ice. Weird, desolate, yet 

 fascinating, such a subject rendered by a master- 

 hand would appeal to every naturalist ; gazing upon 

 it one would almost expect to see a lemming pop 

 out of its burrow, or to hear the bark of an 

 Arctic fox. 



On December 4, 1900, the skins and skulls of a 

 pair of Greenland musk ox (the first specimens 

 known to science) were received in England. The 

 skins were mounted, and the female, exhibited 

 at a meeting of the Zoological Society, was afterwards 

 presented to the National Collection by Mr. 

 Rowland Ward. In March, 1901, Dr. J. A. Allen 

 published a valuable memoir on " The Musk Oxen 

 of Arctic America and Greenland," in Vol XIV. of 



