42 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Pike mentions a herd of at least a hundred being seen together, 

 more than half of which were slaughtered by his Indian com- 

 panions. It is singular that one whose experience in pursuit of 

 the Musk-ox in Canada is unrivalled amongst white men, and 

 who has written so well about the animal, should have been 

 unaware that its range extends along two-thirds of the coast-line 

 of the island continent of Greenland. 



So long ago as 1780, Fabricius made mention of the Musk-ox 

 in his ' Fauna Groenlandica,' under the name of Bos grunniens, 

 Linn., having found on an ice-floe, presumably on the shores of 

 the Danish settlements, the skull and horns of a bovine animal, 

 with its feet, and some of its long black hair, underlaid with wool. 

 He was satisfied that no such animal then inhabited that part of 

 West Greenland known to the Danes, and though he suggests 

 that it might have come from the distant and then unknown east 

 coast of Greenland, he seemed to consider it more probable that 

 it had drifted on an ice-raft from Northern Asia. This reasoning 

 induced him to misapply the specific name of the Asiatic Yak 

 to this specimen — a mistake which he himself subsequently 

 acknowledged (Bid. Selsk. Skr. 3 N., vi). No doubt the remains 

 of the Musk-ox found by Fabricius had drifted from the east coast 

 of Greenland, where it is now known the animal abounds. It is 

 interesting, however, to note, that more than a hundred years 

 ago, the Greenlanders or Eskimos of the Danish settlements on 

 the west coast had no knowledge nor tradition connected with 

 the Musk-ox; for otherwise Fabricius would not have selected 

 the far-off regions of Asia as the probable original home of his 

 specimen. 



Nearly twenty years ago I discussed in the pages of this 

 journal* the known range of the Musk-ox, including its dis- 

 tribution in Greenland, and I see no reason to recede from the 

 opinions which I then expressed, that the advent of the animal 

 on the shores of Greenland had been from the westward, and 

 that the progenitors of the Musk-oxen now living on the east 

 coast rounded the north of Greenland, and spread southward 

 until they met with some physical obstruction, such as the 

 glaciers around Cape Farewell, which barred their further pro- 

 gress. The same, in all probability, has been the case on the 



* Zool. 1877, pp. 355 et seq. 





