352 MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. [May 28, 



must have been on the west side. The east was even more vmknown 

 in his day than now, and he was certainly never round Cape Farewell. 

 The Musk-Ox has, therefore, no right to a place in the fauna of 

 Danish Greenland, nor do I believe that at any time it was an in- 

 habitant of that portion of the continent. 



Recent discoveries have, however, shown it to be, with the 

 strongest probability, an inhabitant of the shores of Greenland north 

 of the glaciers of Melville Bay. Dr. Kane met with numerous traces 

 of it in Smith's Sound; and his successor. Dr. Hayes, found at Chester 

 valley in the same inlet, among Eskimo kjcekkenmoeddings, the 

 skull of a Musk-Ox. Eskimo tradition describes the animal as at 

 one time common along the whole coast, and they, affirm that it is 

 yet occasionally to be met with. No longer ago than in the winter 

 of 18.59 a hunter of Wolstenholme Sound, near a place called Oo- 

 meak, came upon two animals, and killed one of them *. 



I think, therefore, that we may with some authority assume that 

 the Musk-Ox is not yet extinct in Greenland. 



11. Rangifer TARANDUS (Linn.), Baird. 



Var. groenlandicus, Kerr (Linn. 1792, p. 297). 



Groenl. Tukto (tootoo) ; S, Pangnek ; $, Kollauak. 



I will not here enter into any discussion of the vexed question of 

 the identity of the European and American Reindeers, or whether 

 the Greenland Reindeer is specifically distinct from the American 

 species ; suffice it to say that the heading of this note suffi- 

 ciently expresses my views on the subject, after very excellent 

 opportunities of comparison and study, and that I consider the 

 Greenland Reindeer only a climatic variety of the European species. 

 I have, moreover, seen specimens of Reindeer horns from Greenland 

 which could not be distinguished from European, and vice versa. 

 On the whole, however, there is a slight variation, which may be 

 expressed by the trivial name to which I have referred at the com- 

 mencement of these remarksf. 



It is found over the whole country, from north to south %, but not 

 nearly so plentiful as it used to be. Indeed it is fast on the de- 

 crease, on account of the unmerciful way in which it is slaughtered 

 by the natives for the skin alone, as is the buffalo in America. The 

 skins are a great article of commerce ; sometimes they sell in Copen- 

 hagen at from 3 to 7 rigsdaler (6«. 9d. to 15*. 9rf.) each, accord- 

 ing to the quality. (The natives get in Greenland only 72 skillings 

 (Is. 6</.) for them). The yearly production used to be in the sum- 

 mer time from 10.000 to 20,000, but it is now on the decrease. 



Dr. Hayes fed his party luxuriously on them all winter at Port 

 Foulke in Smith's Sound, not many miles from where Kane's 



* Hayes's Voyage towards the North Pole (1866), p. 390. 



t Vide Murray, Edinb. New Philosophical Journal, Jan. and April, 1859 ; 

 Newton in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864; Murray, Geog. Distrib. of Mammals, p. 130 

 et seq.; Baird, North Am. Mammals; id. U. S. Pat. OiRce Kep. (Agric.) 1851 

 (1852), p. 105. 



\ Earer on the east coast (apparently). 



