BUFFALO AND MUSK OX 
The American race of musk oxen were first made known to Europeans 
in the year 1720 by Capitaine J6r£mie, who was in command of Fort Bour- 
bon, on the west coast of Hudson’s Bay, at the mouth of the Hayes River, 
from 1697 till 1714, when that French port was transferred to the British, 
and was renamed York Factory. From Fort Bourbon, which was situated 
approximately in lat. 57°, JCrCmie made journeys northward and west- 
ward, and encountered musk oxen in the country between Churchill and 
Seal Rivers, between lat. 58° and 60°. His account of the country and its 
animals was published in Amsterdam in Bernard’s “ Recueil de Voyages 
au Nord,” Vol. VI, of which the first edition appeared in 1720. The 
existence of living musk oxen in Greenland was not known until 1859, 
although skulls were discovered six years previously. 
The skins of the musk ox are largely used in Canada for sleigh rugs, 
and since the disappearance of buffalo robes the price of these has greatly 
increased. 
In 1891 the Hudson Bay Company sold 1,358 skins, which fetched up to 
£6 apiece. Parties of Indians are employed by the fur companies to collect 
these skins. The Indians soon run a herd to bay with their dogs and the 
whole herd is slaughtered. According to Mr Warburton Pike, dogs are not 
employed for hunting in summer. A band of musk ox are driven into 
some small lake and followed by the Indians in canoes. The musk ox seems 
to be a poor swimmer and falls an easy victim. 
When Mr Pike wrote his interesting account of his trip to the Barren 
Lands, he was of opinion that the musk ox stood in little, if any, danger 
of impending extermination. He did not then know of the numbers of 
Esquimaux that hunted them in the north (their chief habitat), nor that 
the whalers, who have indirectly been the chief cause of destruction, 
would ever come there. 
Musk oxen live together in herds of from fifteen to thirty during the 
summer months, but in winter they come together in much larger bands, 
and over a hundred have been seen together. It is probable that their general 
habits are much the same as those of other ruminants, for, during the 
summer and autumn the large bulls are generally found alone. According 
to the natives, the female only produces one calf every second year, so that 
the increase is not rapid. Mr Pike says that in summer their food consists 
almost exclusively of the leaves of small willows found growing on the 
Barren Grounds; but in spring and winter they eat quantities of lichens 
and moss, which they find by pawing away the snow after the manner 
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