NORTH AMERICAN RUMINANTS 
have been gathered for it, but not enough to complete the group 
The Goats and Sheep are mountain dwellers, and their favorite 
haunts are the more inaccessible parts of the higher ranges. Yet 
they have been followed by the hunter into their remotest and 
most secluded resorts. The Sheep are exceedingly watchful and 
sagacious, and these traits alone have preserved them from total 
annihilation. They have been exterminated in the more acces- 
sible parts of their ranges, and survive in comparatively small 
numbers and greatly restricted areas. The Goats were originally 
much less widely distributed in North America than the Sheep. 
Their chief protection lies in the inaccessibility of their favorite 
Tanges; since, when once discovered, their safety depends upon 
the difficulty and danger attending their pursuit rather than 
upon that keen alertness so characteristic of the Mountain 
Sheep. 
The Musk-Oxen, or Musk-Sheep, as they sometimes are called, 
are the only remaining members of the Ruminants to be men- 
tioned. They are, however, neither oxen nor sheep, 
nor very closely allied to either, but are a very distinct 
type of the hollow-horned section of the Ruminants, entitled to a 
distinctive name free from the implication of any such alliance. 
Like the misapplied name Buffalo for the Bison, however, and of 
Robin for various birds, in different countries, that are not robins, 
and scores of other misapplied popular names, the term Musk-Ox 
has so firm a foothold that it is not likely soon to be displaced. 
The Musk-Oxen are the most exclusively Arctic of all Ruminants, 
their home being the remote, treeless Barren Grounds of the far 
North, where vegetation is scanty, and the ground is buried in snow 
for a large part of the year. Nature has provided the animal 
with a heavy fleece of soft hair and wool for its protection against 
the inclemency of the long Arctic winter. The Musk-Oxen are 
in the last stages of numerical decline; formerly ranging, in com- 
paratively recent geological times, as far south as Kentucky, 
Missouri and Utah, and over a large part of Siberia to Germany 
and England, they now are restricted to the Barren Grounds east 
of the Mackenzie river, the Arctic islands north of Hudson Bay, 
and a narrow coast strip on both sides of northern Greenland, 
25 
Musk-Oxen. 
