BOVID& 359 



of the animal is covered with long brown hair, thick, matted, and 

 curly on the shoulders, so as to give the appearance of a hump, but 

 elsewhere straight and hanging down, that of the sides, back, and 

 haunches reaching as far as the middle of the legs and entirely 

 concealing the very short tail. There is also a thick woolly under- 

 fur, shed in the summer. The hair on the lower jaw, throat, and 

 chest is long and straight, and hangs down like a beard or dewlap, 

 though there is no loose fold of skin in this situation as in Oxen. 

 The limbs are stout and short, terminating in unsymmetrical hoofs, 

 the external one being rounded, the internal pointed, and the sole 

 partially covered with hair. 



The Musk-Ox is at the present day confined to the most northern 

 parts of North America, where it ranges over the rocky barren 

 grounds between the 60th parallel and the shores of the Arctic 

 Sea. Its southern range is gradually contracting, and it appears 

 that it is no longer met with west of the Mackenzie River, though 

 formerly abundant as far as Eschscholtz Bay. Northwards and 

 eastwards it extends through the Parry Islands and Grinnell Land 

 to North Greenland, reaching on the west coast as far south as 

 Melville Bay ; and it was also met with in abundance by the 

 German polar expedition of 1869-70 at Sabine Island on the east 

 coast. No trace of it has been found in Spitzbergen or Franz 

 Joseph Land. As proved by the discovery of fossil remains, it 

 ranged during the Pleistocene period over northern Siberia and the 

 plains of Germany and France, its bones occurring very generally 

 in river deposits along with those of the Reindeer, Mammoth, and 

 Woolly Rhinoceros. It has also been found in Pleistocene gravels 

 in several parts of England, as Maidenhead, Bromley, Freshfield 

 near Bath, Barnwood near Gloucester, and also in the lower brick- 

 earth of the Thames valley at Crayford, Kent. 



It is gregarious in habit, assembling in herds of twenty or thirty 

 head, or, according to Hearne, sometimes eighty or a hundred, in 

 which there are seldom more than two or three full-grown males. 

 The Musk-Ox runs with considerable speed, notwithstanding the 

 shortness of its legs. Major H. W. Feilden, naturalist to the Arctic 

 expedition of 1875, says: "No person watching this animal in a 

 state of nature could fail to see how essentially ovine are its actions. 

 When alarmed they gather together like a flock of sheep herded by 

 a collie dog, and the way in which they pack closely together and 

 follow blindly the vacillating leadership of the old ram is unquestion- 

 ably sheep-like. When thoroughly frightened they take to the hills, 

 ascending precipitous slopes and scaling rocks with great agility." 

 They feed chiefly on grass, but also on moss, lichens, and tender 

 shoots of the willow and pine. The female brings forth a single 

 young one in the end of May or beginning of June after a gestation 

 of nine months. According to Sir J. Richardson, " when this animal 



