OVIBOS MOSCHATUS IN IHE FOEEST-BED. 577 



projecting slightly .further outwards than in the few specimens with 

 which it has been compared; audits only importance lies in the fact of 

 its having been obtained from the Forest-bed, from strata earlier in 

 point of time than any in which it has hitherto been found. 



3. Range in North America, Northern Asia, and 

 continental Europe. 



Since the publication of the memoir on Ovibos moschatus, published 

 by the Palaaontographical Society in 1872, several discoveries have 

 been made which render it desirable to give an outline of the range of 

 the animal in space and time up to the knowledge of to-day. The 

 animal is, as is well known, now only found in the mossy treeless 

 districts bordering on the Arctic Ocean in North America and 

 Greenland, and apparently does not range, even in the winter, 

 further to the south than the latitude of 59° ; nor does it range 

 further to the west than the valley of the river Mackenzie. In the 

 Pleistocene age, however, it extended far beyond these narrow limits. 

 The remains obtained by Captains Beechey and Kellett in the frozen 

 loams, sands, and gravels of Eschscholtz Bay prove that then it lived 

 on the banks of the streams opening on Behring's Straits, along with 

 the elk, bison, reindeer, horse, and mammoth. It is represented by 

 a closely allied form in the Pleistocene strata of the United States, the 

 Ovibos canifrons (male), bombifrons (female) ( = Bootherium of Leidy), 

 found at Big-bone lick, in Kentucky, along with the remains of 

 the reindeer, Yirginian deer, elk, bison, horse, mammoth, Mastodon, 

 Megalonyx, and Mylodon, and in other localities in the water-shed 

 of the Mississippi as far south as Arkansas. 



On the western side of Behring's Straits the remains of the 

 musk-sheep are found throughout the area of the Siberian tundras, 

 and side by side with the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros, and 

 in Northern Germany in association with the same animals, and in 

 various river-deposits and caves in Prance, generally along with 

 these animals and sometimes with flint implements, and the re- 

 mains of Elephas antiquus, the cave-hyaana, and the bear. Ovibos 

 moschatus therefore ranged in the Pleistocene age over an enormous 

 tract in the Old World, over the Siberian steppes, over Russia in 

 Europe, and Northern Germany, and as far to the south west as the 

 Pyrenees. 



It has not been found south of the Alps or west of the Pyrenees, 

 which formed barriers to the migration of the northern group of 

 Asiatic animals in those times. 



4. Present in Britain in Late Pleistocene Age. 



The musk-sheep has been recorded in Britain from the following 

 localities*: — in 1855 a fragment of a skull of a male was obtained by 

 the Bev. Charles Eingsley and Sir John Lubbock from the low-level 

 gravel of the Thames near Maidenhead, in which occur also the re- 

 mains of the mammoth. To Sir John Lubbock also we are indebted 



* See Oi>ibos moschatus, op. cit. chap. iv. 



