224 CATALOGUE OF UNGULATES 



includes Arctic America east of the Mackenzie Eiver and 

 north of the 60th parallel as high as Melville Island and 

 Ellesmere Land, as well as Greenland. Hornaday (Bull. 

 New York Zool. Soc. op. cit.) has, however, published evidence 

 to show that quite recently musk-oxen were to be found in 

 Alaska. This evidence is based on a statement made by 

 Mr. C. D. Brewer, a fur-trader who resided near Point 

 Barrow, Alaska, for six-and-twenty years. On arrival there 

 in 1884 he became acquainted with an aged Eskimo who had 

 in earlier days killed musk-oxen himself, and he subsequently 

 came across a second native who, as a boy, had accompanied 

 his father and family on musk-ox hunting expeditions. One 

 such expedition was made to a small river known as the 

 Oo-ming-mue, an Innuit name meaning musk-ox. Mr. Brewer 

 further stated that he himself had on several occasions found 

 musk-ox skulls lying on the open tundra in Northern 

 Alaska, one of which retained the horns, with the portion 

 which had come into contact with the ground much decayed. 

 This specimen was discovered in 1895, but was unfortunately 

 given away to a collector a few years later. Dr. Hornaday 

 remarks that this evidence renders it certain that the range 

 of the musk-ox extended less than a century ago westward 

 of the Mackenzie Eiver along the Arctic mainland coast at 

 least so far as the longitude of Point Barrow, in the extreme 

 north of Alaska, where its extermination was doubtless 

 brought about by the natives. Further south fossil skulls 

 of musk-oxen were obtained by Sir F. W. Beechey during 

 the voyage of the Blossom (1825-28), and subsequently by 

 Capt. Kellet and Lieut. Wood from the frozen cliffs of 

 Eschscholtz Bay, Kotzebue Sound, these serving to connect 

 the recent New World members of the group with their 

 extinct representatives in the Pleistocene deposits of northern 

 Asia and Europe. 



OVIBOS MOSCHATUS. 



Bos mosohatus, Zimmermann, Oeograjph. Geschichte, vol. ii, p. 86, 

 1780 ; Huet, Bull. Soc. Acclim. Paris, vol. xxxviii, p. 346, 1891. 



Ovibos moschatus, Blainville, Bull. Soc. Philom. 1816, p. 76 ; 

 Desmarest, Mammalogie, vol. ii, p. 492, 1822; H. Smith, 

 Griffith's Anim. Kingdom, vol. iv, p. 373, 1827; Richardson, 



