B. BKOWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. 23 



surprising to find a zoologist so well acquainted with the Greenland 

 fauna as the elder Reinhardt stating that the Musk-ox, which, like 

 Fabricius, he called Bos grunniens, rarely comes fi'om Melville 

 Island to Greenland.* Mr. Murray seems to doubt on which side 

 of Greenland Fabricius met with his specimen ; but there need be 

 no doubt on that matter, as it must have been on the west side. 

 The east was even more unknown 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 inhabitant 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 

 kjokkenmoddings, 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 1 859 a hunter of Wolstenholme Sound, 

 near a place called Oomiak, came upon two animals, and killed 

 one of them, t 



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

 the Musk-ox is not yet extinct in Greenland. J 



11. Rangifer tarandus (Linn.), Baird. 



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

 Greenl. Tukto (tootoo) ; ^ , Pangnek ; 9 ? KoUauak. 



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 fiom the American 

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

 expresses my views on the subject, after very excellent oppor- 

 tunities 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 

 commencement of these remarks. § 



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- 



* "Isis," 1848, p. 248; Schmarda's "Geograph. Yerbreitung" (1853), 

 p. 370 ; fide Murray's " Geogr. Dist. of the Mammals," p. 140. 



t Hayes's Voyage towards the North Pole (] 866), p. 390. 



X The German Polar Expedition, 1869-70, found it in abundance on the 

 east coast, on Sabine Island ; and Hall's Expedition found it in numbers on 

 the shores of the northern reaches of Smith's Sound. 



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

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

 p. 150 et seq.; Baird, North Am. Mammals; id. U.S. Pat. Office Eep. 

 (Agric.) 1851 (1852), p. 105. 



II Rarer on the east coast (apparently). 



