Vr. B. DAWEIXS OS A SKULL OF OVIBOS MOSCHATUS. 



243 



the sea-bottom is strewn with similar waifs and strays from the 

 Forest-bed, as may be seen by comparing it with a specimen on 

 the table from Mr. Coleman's collection at Gorton. When it is 

 further added that there is no othei: locality than that of the 

 Forest-bed series on record which has fnruished specimens possessed 

 of the above characters, there is, in my opinion, little room for doubt 

 that this specimen was derived from the Forest-bed, and dredged 

 from the bottom of the Xorth Sea, somewhere off the coast of East 

 Anglia. 



The specimen in question consists of the coronal and frontal 

 portions of the shall with the horn-cores and the right orbit of an old 

 male jMusk-sheep. It has been fractured at the parieto-occipital 

 suture ; and the whole of the occiput and the greater part of the 

 basal region has been broken away so as to expose the upper part 

 of the brain-cavity, and to reveal the enormous thickness of the 

 frontals and parietals supporting the horn-cores, the parietal thickness 

 being 2-4 and the frontal 2-1 inches. 



SJcull of Ovibos moschatus. Forest-bed. 

 (One fourth natural size.) 



The horn-cores («, «, in figure) occupy nearly all the parietal 

 surface, nearly meeting in the median line of the frontals (6), and 

 sweep shar^Dly downwards at right angles to their coronal surface, as 

 is usually the case with old males of Ovibos moschatus. Thev are 

 deeply excavated on the upper surfaces for the insertion of the base 

 of the horns, far more deeply than in any skull of Musk- sheep which 

 I have examined, excepting the skull found in Eschscholtz Eay. 



It is comparable to that of the fossil Ovihos cavifrons of Xorth 

 America described by Prof. Leidy *. The horn-cores, however, differ 



* ' Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,' v. Article 3. Journ. Acad. 

 Nat. Sci. Philad. 2nd series, vii. p. 374. See also my British Pleistocene 

 Mammalia, Palseont. Soe. part v. chapter 5. 



