American Big Game in its Haunts 



the light color of its horns, it is sheep-like ; in the 

 absence of interdigital glands, the shortness and 

 stoutness of its cannon bones, and in the presence 

 of a small accessory inner column on the upper 

 molars, it is bovine. But in the coarse longitudinal 

 striation of the bases of its horns it differs from 

 both. The shape of the horns is also peculiar. 

 Curving outward, downward and then sharply up- 

 ward, with broad, flattened bases meeting in the 

 middle line, their outlines are not unlike those of 

 old bulls of the African buffalo. 



At the present time the musk-ox inhabits only 

 arctic America, from Greenland westward nearly 

 to the Mackenzie River, but its range was formerly 

 circumpolar, and in Pleistocene times it inhabited 

 Europe as far south as Germany and France. The 

 musk-ox of Greenland has lately been set aside as 

 a distinct species. The most we can say is that 

 Ovibos is a unique form, standing perhaps some- 

 where between oxen and sheep, and descended 

 from an ancient ruminant type through an ancestry 

 of which we know nothing, for the only fossil re- 

 mains which are at all distinguishable from the 

 existing genus, are yet closely similar to it, and are 

 no older than the Pleistocene of the central United 

 States ; in earlier periods its history is a blank about 

 which it is useless to speculate. 



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