MUSK OXEN IN ENGLAND 291 



the Greenland musk-ox is now regarded as representing 

 a distinct local race. 



To discuss the affinities of the musk-ox on this occasion 

 would obviously be out of place ; but my readers may 

 probably like to be informed of some of the reasons which 

 preclude its being classed either with the oxen or with the 

 sheep. As regards the horns, it will suffice to say that 

 they are quite unlike those of either of the groups in 

 question. From the oxen the animal is broadly dis- 

 tinguished alike by the structure of its upper teeth and 

 also by its hairy muzzle. But this broad and hairy 

 muzzle, in which there is a narrow naked and granular 

 area immediately above and between the nostrils, is equally 

 unlike the narrow and short-haired muzzle of the sheep 

 and goats. In the structure of its upper teeth, as well as 

 in the presence of glands below the eyes and of only two 

 mammae in the female, the musk-ox is, however, much 

 more like the latter group. But these two latter features 

 are of no great zoological ^importance, some sheep lacking 

 face-glands, while one species of goat has four mammae ; 

 and they in no wise serve to prove the existence of any 

 close relationship between musk-oxen and sheep. It may 

 be added that the aborted tail of the musk-ox separates 

 it very widely from the oxen, in all of which this appendage 

 is of great relative length ; but in this respect the animal 

 comes closer to the sheep, nearly all the wild forms of 

 which have short and stumpy tails. In the extremely 

 late development of the horns (as attested by the survivor 

 of the Woburn pair) the species seem to stand apart from 

 both groups. 



Judging from the photographs in an account by Dr. Nathorst 

 of the hunting of these animals, it would seem that in East 

 Greenland musk-oxen are commonly found in small herds of 



