146 
ANE) STREAM. 
[.FEB. 22, 1902 
MUSK-OX CALF SHOWN AT THE. CHICAGO SPORTSMEN'S SHOW. 
, From a photograph. 
times turn its irritable disposition to good account, for 
an expert hunter having provoked a bull to attack him, 
wheels around it more quiekly than it can turn, and by 
repeated stabs in the belly, puts an end to its. life. _-Thc 
wool of a musk-ox resembles that of the bison', but is 
perhaps finer, and would no doubt be highly useful in 
the arts, if it could be procured in sufficient quantity." 
The musk-ox at present is confined to the eastern 
half of northern North America north of latitude 65, 
including Greenland, where it is quite abundant. Many 
of the Arctic expeditions of recent times have supported 
themselves by its flesh, which is very nutritious, and a 
very few hardy sportsmen have journeyed to the north for 
the purpose of securing this rarest of all game. Among 
such may be mentioned Pike, whose faithful volume on 
the Barren Grounds of Northern Canada is full of in- 
terest, and Whitney, who published an equally interesting 
work entitled "On Snow Shoes to the Barren Ground." 
The systematic position of the musk-ox is intermediate 
between the sheep and the oxen, but is perhaps nearer to 
the oxen. It takes its name from an odor with which 
the flesh of the bulls is said to be permeated at the rutting 
season, but this odor is reported as not disagreeable or 
even perceptible at other seasons, when the flesh is very 
good. It is compared with moose meat rather than 
buffalo meat by writers. 
There, are three points about the musk-ox which are 
very obvious and interesting. 
One of these is the coat, which is extremely long— the 
hair on portions of the body being 15 or 20 inches in 
length — and hangs down toward the ground about to the 
hocks, and the wrists — which are commonly called the 
knees. This robe is generally very dark brown in color, 
but the forehead is paler, sometimes whitish, and there 
is a patch of yellowish or whitish on the back. The 
animal's tail is very short and is entirely hidden by the 
long hair. 
The legs, which, owing to the long, down-hanging coat 
appear very short, terminate in large hoofs. These are 
well separated in the middle, but curved together again 
at the toes and hollowed out beneath like those of the 
caribou. This form of hoofs, as suggested by authors, 
enables them to climb the rocky ridges with great facility, 
and to scrape away the snow in their search for lichen and 
moss. No doubt it enables them also to run about with- 
out slipping over snow and ice. 
The horns of the musk-ox in the young grow out from 
the side of the head, very much like those of the domestic 
cattle, as shown in the photograph; but with age these 
horns enlarge at the base with a flattening backward and 
forward, and also an approach to one another in the 
middle line, so that finally the bases of the two horns 
cover the whole top of the head, and almost come to- 
gether. Whitney tells us that in its sixth year, and after 
that, there is a crevice between the horns which in an old 
bull is from an inch to an inch and a half wide. At the 
base of the horns, called the boss, the surface of the horn 
is wrinkled and rough, but where the horns bend down- 
ward and turn up again, it is smooth. The width of the 
boss in the cow is less than half the width of the average 
bull. 
During the last few years several musk-oxen have 
been captured and brought out to civilization. from their 
frozen homes, and it is quite apparent that these animals 
may readily be domesticated, providing only the proper 
food can be found for them. A few years ago Prof. 
Kolthoff, the leader of a Norwegian Arctic expedition, 
brought out with him from Greenland two musk-ox calves 
— a bull and cow — which were doing well, and that he 
hoped to be able to acclimatize on the hillsides of north- 
ern' Sweden. Whatever became of them we do not know. 
Again in August, 1900, a calf was captured in Jame- 
son's Land, East Greenland. The occurrence is described 
as follows: The party, after having passed several soli- 
tary musk-oxen, came upon a herd of twelve full-grown 
animals, accompanied by one calf. Not far off there were 
two bulls, which afterward joined the other herd. This 
herd was lying on the hillside, and on its outer flank 
lay a cow with a calf near it, and a number of other cows 
not far off. One ®f the party managed to creep to a 
large stone, something over 100 yards from the cow and 
calf. He intended to shoot the mother in the hope that 
the calf would remain with it, and to permit the rest of 
the herd to run off. At the shot, however, the whole herd 
took to flight, but being pursued, by the help of dogs they 
were stopped from time to time and killed, until at last 
only the calf and two wounded cows were still on foot. 
The cows were killed and the calf captured. It was then 
two or three months old, and made a very good fight be- 
fore it was subdued. But after being taken on board 
ship it became quite tractable, and has done well ever since. 
It was taken to Denmark and kept in the Zoological Gar- 
dens, .Copenhagen. Of it the London Field says: "Ad- 
ditional interest now attaches to him from the faGt that 
be has passed fifteen months, including an exceptionally 
hot summer, in a climate differing greatly from that of 
his nato r e wilds in the Arctic, and that he is not only 
alive, but flourishing. Herr Jul. Schiott, the able man- 
aging director of the gardens, is to be congratulated on 
the success which has attended his treatment of the rarest 
animal in the collection under his charge. He has in- 
creased greatly in weight; his whole frame is sturdy 
and thick-set; he has completely lost the lameness with 
which he was affected, as well as the depression from 
which he for a time suffered ; he has started a pair of 
horns, which are already 9 inches or 10 inches in length; 
his little wild eyes shine out from his shaggy countenance 
bright and clear, and he has a splendid coat — about the 
shoulders thicker than a bear's. Although the open-air 
inclosure in which he is confined is a roomy one, he 
looks as if a good straightaway gallop would please him 
greatly, and the chamois and pair of goats which con- 
stitute his companions get hunted about a bit. He has 
become quite fond of and eats a lot of hay, and every 
morning he gets three loaves of French bread, a luxury 
wrth which, says his attendant, 'he would not be supplied 
in Greenland, where the baker does not call every morn- 
ing.' Such matters, however, can hardly be looked upon 
as necessaries of life, and in so far as climate and food 
are concerned, there seems to be no reason why the plan, 
which has of late been much discussed in the Scandi- 
navian press, of acclimatizing the musk-ox in Sweden, 
should not be carried out. The main difficulty would ap- 
pear to lie in the capture of living specimens, and it is 
earnestly to be hoped that in future those who proceed 
to the Arctic regions with such a purpose, whether they 
be members of scientific expeditions or Norwegian seal 
and walrus hunters, will be provided with materials some- 
what more humane in their character and more suitable 
for the object in view than magazine rifles." 
There are said to be other captive musk-oxen — one in 
England in the possession of the Duke of Woburn, and 
one in the zoological garden at Berlin. 
"Ways of the Gadwall. 
Editor For est. and Stream: 
I was talking last week with an old gentleman who has 
lived here for over eighty years. He tells me that when 
he was a boy the gadwall was known all along the East-' 
ern Shore by the name of bladen duck. I have spoken to 
several other gunners of the old days, and all agree that 
the original name was bladen duck. Why it was so 
called none can tell me. If you should ask any one here 
now if he can shoot a gadwall, he would look at you in 
bewilderment, but say blatin duck and he would know 
what you meant at once. 
Now blatin would seem to mean that it was very noisy, 
and this is the fact. All the time they are on the wing 
they keep up a sort of whispering quack; of an evening 
you can hear the bunch coming long before you see them. 
Stockton, Md. O. D. FouLKS, 
[As suggested in "American Duck Shooting" and in 
an earlier note from Mr. Foulks, blatin, bladen, are the 
equivalent of bleating and blatant, and these of the bird's 
specific name strepera, meaning noisy.] 
European Widgeon in North Carolina. 
Bv an unfortunate error of the type the reference in 
Mr. Ruthven Deane's note on this subject in Forest and 
Stream of Feb. 15, was badly mixed up. It should have 
been Nuttall Bulletin, Vol. I., 1880, p. 126 
Maryland Duck Shooting. 
Our correspondent, Mr. O. D. Foulks, of Stockton, 
Md., writes us : 
Our December shooting was something fine, the best in 
years: gunners who were with me killed from my bat- 
tery alone, 980 geese, brant and ducks from the last week 
in November to the first week in January. Since then 
we have not had one "good day. The weather has been so 
cold and stormy and the bay always frozen or full of 
moving ice. It has been the coldest and stormiest winter 
for a great many years— in fact, I do not remember one 
where we have had so little chance to shoot. The bay 
is full of fowl of all kinds, and when the weather is such 
we can shoot, expect some nice work will be done. I 
wish the sale of wildfowl could be prevented. I have 
not sold one for years. On days that no one is here I do 
not go out, or if I do only kill enough for myself and ft 
few neighbors. 
