BUFFALO AND MUSK OX 
they are very sheep -like in their habits. When moving, the old bulls take 
the lead, and when alarmed they crowd together like a flock of sheep. 
Mr Thompson- Seton has proved that it is possible to go from Edmonton, 
via Athabasca and Great Slave Lake, to the Northern Barrens, shoot a musk 
ox and see something of the Barren Land caribou, and return to civiliza- 
tion by the same route in the same year before the ice stops canoe navi- 
gation. He did this a few years ago, but may be considered lucky in having 
found a musk ox bull almost the first day he went out to hunt. Others have 
previously tried to do the same, and have either had to winter in the north 
or return over the ice with dogs, an arduous undertaking. 
Zoologically speaking, the musk ox is a very interesting animal, repre- 
senting a genus which has no very close relatives, but from the sports- 
man’s point of view it is a failure, and the desire of head hunters to possess 
its shaggy head and curiously curved horns is rather the outcome of the 
fact of its rarity in collections and the difficulty old-time hunters had to 
obtain them, rather than their intrinsic or artistic value. There is nothing 
more thrilling in hunting lore than Mr War burton Pike’s accounts of 
his advance and retreat from the land of the musk ox, and the fearful 
privations which he underwent to obtain his trophies and see the 
animals in their home. But now, any rich man can charter a powerful 
little ice -bumping whaler and go to Victoria Land, or the Liverpool coast 
of Greenland, and shoot the animals without enduring any hardships. 
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