OVIBOVISLE 22$ 



and cylindrical tips. Coat long, shaggy, and nearly uniform 

 in colour. Orbits of skull tubular, nasals wide and short. 



Kowarzik divides musk-oxen into two groups, a western 

 (typified by mackcnzianus, and including the Bering Strait,. 

 Asiatic, and European Pleistocene forms), characterised by 

 the presence of a lachrymal pit and the reduction of the 

 number of teats to a single pair ; and an eastern, in which 

 there is no lachrymal depression but two pairs of teats. No> 

 account is taken apparently in this classification of face- 

 glands, which are generally stated to be absent, but are 

 recorded by Lonnberg in a head which came from the area 

 inhabited by the members of Kowarzik's eastern group. 



These two groups are regarded by their describer as of 

 generic value ; for the eastern of which, as typified by the 

 Canadian 0. moschatus of Blainville, he has proposed the 

 name Bosoms t while he has employed Ovibos for the western, 

 group. This, of course, is quite illegitimate ; and if such 

 subdivision were adopted Ovibos must be retained for the 

 typical moschatus, while Prceovibos, originally proposed for a 

 Pleistocene form, would be available for the western group. 

 Their apparently frequent absence seems, however, to indicate 

 that the face-glands are on the point of vanishing in these 

 ruminants ; and if this be so, there is no reason why the 

 same thing may not hold good with regard to the lachrymal 

 pits. On this view the presence or absence of these pits- 

 is of little or no classificatory value, and under no circum- 

 stance would justify the splitting of the original genus into 

 two, even if these pits were constantly absent in the eastern 

 and present in the western forms. But, as a matter of fact, 

 the alleged distinction does not seem to hold good, as some 

 of the undermentioned skulls from the eastern area appear 

 to show distinct lachrymal pits.* 



At the present day the distributional area of the genus- 



* It is not easy to realise what Kowarzik means by a lachrymal 

 pit, as he excludes (Fauna Arctica, p. 106) what is regarded as such 

 by Lonnberg, and terms it a depression caused by the angulation of 

 the lachrymal. Moreover, after stating in two places (op. cit. 

 pp. 107, 120) that the eastern members of the group have no- 

 lachrymal pit, he refers in a third (ibid. p. 116) to the lachrymal pit 

 being deeper in the western than in the eastern group (Lacrimale mil 

 tiefer Tranengrube). Kiitimeyer states that the depression generally 

 existing in the lachrymal is undoubtedly a true fossa laclirymalis. 



