1855.] OWEN FOSSIL MUSK-BUFFALO. 125 



for an arctic climate, like that which the extinct northern Elephant 

 and Rhinoceros presented. 



Not long after Jeremie* and Dobbs had made known the exist- 

 ence of the Musk-buffalo in North America, Pallas f described a 

 fossil skull, which he referred to the same species. This skull was 

 found in the arctic circle on the banks of the Ob : a second cranium, 

 referred to the same species, was discovered in a marsh or moor still 

 further north. A third fossil skull from the mouth of the Yana, 

 between the Lena and Indigirska, was afterwards described and 

 figured by M. Ozeretskowsky|. 



The short account by Cu\T.er§ of the fossil remains of the Musk- 

 buffalo is based upon the memoirs of the Petersburg Academicians ; 

 the figures given by Pallas being reproduced in the * Ossemens Fos- 

 siles* on a reduced scale in pi. xii. figs. 9 & 10, and those of Oze- 

 retskowsky in pi. xi. figs. 6 & 7 (with the horny sheaths of the horn- 

 cores) . Cuvier leaves the question of the specific relations of these 

 Siberian fossils undetermined, and concludes his notice by remarking 

 that, as they were obtained from no great depth, nothing hinders but 

 that they might have come, as Pallas believed, from America across 

 the polar ice ; since the Musk-ox has been, in that way, seen in 

 Greenland 1| . 



Sir John Richardson, in his excellent account of the fossil bones 

 from Eschscholtz Bay, justly remarks that " a greater accumulation 

 of fossil materials is needed to determine the question" which Pallas 

 and Cuvier had left undecided : and Sir John gives a description and 

 figure of the skeleton of a young Musk-bull, and figures of the skulls 

 and some other bones of the male, female and young of the same 

 recent species, in order to facilitate future comparisons. An extinct 

 species is, however, founded by the same author on a fossil vertebra 

 dentata under the name of Ovibos maximus. 



The materials for contributing towards the solution of the question 

 as to the specific relations of the fossil and recent Musk-buffalo, at 

 present at my command, are the fossil cranium discovered at Maiden- 

 head, — a corresponding part of the skull of the fossil Ovibos from 

 Siberia, which formed part of the Museum of the late Joshua Brookes, 

 without the record of any more special locality, — the plaster cast of 

 a similar fossil, also from Siberia, brought by Sir Roderick Murchison 

 from Russia, — and the recent skull of an old Musk-buffalo brought 

 from the Arctic regions, in which the occipital region and the right 

 horn-core are partially mutilated, and the entire horn is preserved on 

 the left side. 



In the form of the occipitial region, in the form, proportions, and 

 direction of the horn-cores, especially in the extent of the rough, 

 flattened, horizontal tract at the upper surface of their base, the 



* In Charlevoix's * Nouvelle France,' vol. iii. p. 131, " Boeuf musque." 



t Novi Comment. Acad. Sclent. Imp. Petropolit. tom. xvii. tab. xvii. figs. 1-3, 

 1772. 



+ Memoires de I'Acad. de Petersb. t. iii. p. 215. pi. 6, 1809. 



§ Ossemens Fossiles, 4to. tom. iv. p. 155. 



II Fossil Mammals, Zoology of H.M.S. Herald, 4to. 1852. 

 VOL. XII. — PART I. K 



