BOVIDA 359 
of the animal is covered with long brown hair, thick, matted, and 
curly on the shoulders, so as to give the appearance of a hump, but 
elsewhere straight and hanging down,—that of the sides, back, and 
haunches reaching as far as the middle of the legs and entirely 
concealing the very short tail. There is also a thick woolly under- 
fur, shed in the summer. The hair on the lower jaw, throat, and 
chest is long and straight, and hangs down like a beard or dewlap, 
though there is no loose fold of skin in this situation as in Oxen. 
The limbs are stout and short, terminating in unsymmetrical hoofs, 
the external one being rounded, the internal pointed, and the sole 
partially covered with hair. 
The Musk-Ox is at the present day confined to the most northern 
parts of North America, where it ranges over the rocky barren 
grounds between the 60th parallel and the shores of the Arctic 
Sea. Its southern range is gradually contracting, and it appears 
that it is no longer met with west of the Mackenzie River, though 
formerly abundant as far as Eschscholtz Bay. Northwards and 
eastwards it extends through the Parry Islands and Grinnell Land 
to North Greenland, reaching on the west coast as far south as 
Melville Bay; and it was also met with in abundance by the 
German polar expedition of 1869-70 at Sabine Island on the east 
coast. No trace of it has been found in Spitzbergen or Franz 
Joseph Land. As proved by the discovery of fossil remains, it 
ranged during the Pleistocene period over northern Siberia and the 
plains of Germany and France, its bones occurring very generally 
in river deposits along with those of the Reindeer, Mammoth, and 
Woolly Rhinoceros. It has also been found in Pleistocene gravels 
in several parts of England, as Maidenhead, Bromley, Freshfield 
near Bath, Barnwood near Gloucester, and also in the lower brick- 
earth of the Thames valley at Crayford, Kent. 
It is gregarious in habit, assembling in herds of twenty or thirty 
head, or, according to Hearne, sometimes eighty or a hundred, in 
which there are seldom more than two or three full-grown males. 
The Musk-Ox runs with considerable speed, notwithstanding the 
shortness of its legs. Major H. W. Feilden, naturalist to the Arctic 
expedition of 1875, says: “No person watching this animal in a 
state of nature could fail to see how essentially ovine are its actions. 
When alarmed they gather together like a flock of sheep herded by 
a collie dog, and the way in which they pack closely together and 
follow blindly the vacillating leadership of the old ram is unquestion- 
ably sheep-like. When thoroughly frightened they take to the hills, 
ascending precipitous slopes and scaling rocks with great agility.” 
They feed chiefly on grass, but also on moss, lichens, and tender 
shoots of the willow and pine. The female brings forth a single 
young one in the end of May or beginning of June after a gestation 
of nine months. According to Sir J. Richardson, “ when this animal 
