Dec. 21, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
785 
Recent Extinction of Muskox in Alaska. 
In modern times the muskox has been be¬ 
lieved to be peculiar to the Barren lands of 
North America lying between the Mackenzie 
River and the Atlantic Coast. Anciently it was 
a species of circumpolar distribution, and in 
Glacial time was found well south in North 
America—say as far as the Ohio River. 
So far as known no specimens have ever 
been taken in Alaska or in the country west of 
the Mackenzie River by white men. On the 
other hand, bones, which do not appear very 
ancient, have very frequently been found in 
Alaska. 
In 1829 Richardson stated that the Indians 
reported that the flat country west of the Rocky 
Mountains — Yukon Terri¬ 
tory and Alaska — was in¬ 
habited by the muskox and 
reindeer. 
It is certain that the 
Alaska Eskimo of modern 
times know the muskox 
well, and call it by nearly 
the same name as the East¬ 
ern Eskimo, but do not ap¬ 
pear to have seen it. They 
declare, however, that their 
fathers used to kill musk¬ 
ox in that country. 
All this and much more 
is brought out by Dr. J. A. 
Allen in commenting on a 
letter about the muskox 
received from Vilhjalmur 
Stefansson, who has just 
returned from a four years’ 
exploration in the Arctic, 
during which he made 
many discoveries of extra¬ 
ordinary interest and inci¬ 
dentally suffered great 
hardships. 
Stefansson brought back to the museum many 
specimens, among which were remains of musk¬ 
ox. Concerning these, he has written to Dr. 
Allen, giving the sources of his information as 
follows: 
“Information secured from natives and white 
residents in Alaska: During the winter 1899-1900 
there died at Cape Smythe (or near there) the 
Eskimo man called Mangi by the whalers (prob¬ 
ably Mangilanna). He was the last to die of 
Cape Smythe (Point Barrow) natives who had 
seen live muskoxen in that vicinity. He was 
probably born between 1845 and 1850, as he was 
able to remember Maguire’s visit to Point Bar- 
row. A few years after Maguire’s time—perhaps 
therefore about 1858—there was scarcity of food 
in winter at Cape Smythe. Mangi’s father then 
went inland looking for caribou, and some dis¬ 
tance up the Kunk River, which flows into Wain- 
wright’s Inlet, they fell in with a band of thir¬ 
teen muskoxen and killed them all. Since then 
no one near Point Barrow is known to have 
killed muskoxen or seen them. 
“There are many places inland from Point 
Barrow where muskox skulls and bones are 
abundant. As these are heavy and there is no 
market for them locally, few are brought to 
the coast. Our party secured one skull only. 
“Information based on specimens: While 
digging in an old house ruin about fifteen miles 
southwest along the coast from Cape Smythe an 
Eskimo last summer (1912) found a muskox skin 
and brought it to me for sale. It is in the Point 
Barrow collection which has just arrived at the 
Museum, but has not yet been unpacked. An¬ 
other Eskimo found a smaller piece of skin in 
another house which I believe to be of a muskox, 
though its badly decayed conditions makes it 
difficult to say positively that it is not the skin 
of the barren ground bear.” 
Our Narrow Escape from a Fish-Like 
Existence. 
BY W. J. MURRAY. 
Assuming the correctness of the nebular 
theory of the origin of worlds as set forth by 
Newton and Laplace, it follows that this earth 
of ours formed at one time an integral portion 
of the sun when in its primal and fiery nebulous 
condition before the earth was cast off as a 
ring from the rotating solar mass. 
When this event took place many millions 
of years ago—estimated by some physicists and 
astronomers as not much less than one hundred 
millions—the earth must have started on its sepa¬ 
rate career as an independent planet in a fiery 
incandescent condition and must have gone 
through a gradual process of cooling during the 
whole of the azoic or lifeless period of its 
history. 
In this natural grading of temperature a 
stage was reached where under a special set of 
conditions, chemical, thermal, electrical, aqueous, 
etc., the passage from the inorganic to the or¬ 
ganic, from non-living to living matter, was 
brought about. But previous to this stage, how¬ 
ever, the heat of the earth was too great to 
support life, even in its most lowly form. 
Water is a first essential to the formation 
and the maintenance of life, and it was only 
after the enveloping vapors of the earth had 
cooled down and had fallen in the form of rain 
that the development of life became possible. 
When the first faint throb of life appeared 
in the lukewarm lagoons and shallow margins 
of the Laurentian seas, the ductile and plastic 
germs of life became subject to the operative 
laws of evolution and entered on the world’s 
vast struggle for existence and for survivorship 
in the race of life. 
It is estimated that there is a sufficient 
quantity of water contained in all the seas 
to cover the whole earth to the depth of 
an English mile, provided there were no inequali¬ 
ties on its surface; that is to say, if it were quite 
even and smooth like a billiard ball. In such 
a case it is evident that there could have been 
no dry land at all, and hence life could only 
have been developed on an aquatic basis, along 
fish lines. 
Suppose that the earth in cooling contracted 
uniformly, as for anything we could tell to the 
contrary it might well have done, then of course 
there could not have been any land animals at 
all. This apparent possibility was, however, 
averted by the fortuitous fact that incidentally 
to the cooling and shrinking of the earth, in¬ 
equalities arose on its surface, such as moun¬ 
tains and valleys, hills and hollows, in the same 
manner that an apple shrinks when stored in the 
cellar, leaving wrinkles on its surface. 
This process brought about the appearance 
of dry land on the earth, but only to a compara¬ 
tively limited extent, as three-quarters of its 
surface are still covered with water. 
The strange and weird feeling induced by 
these reflections is somewhat mingled—surprise 
that our fate hung on such a slender thread and 
a sense of satisfaction that we escaped after all, 
although at the earth’s beginning the chances 
would appear to have been as much as three to 
one against our ever being land dwellers at all. 
Of course it is impossible to say what the 
human race, living an aquatic existence, might 
have been able to achieve in such a strange en¬ 
vironment. Quite possibly we might have had 
an opportunity of playing some useful part and 
even to make our lives sublime in the regions 
swayed by the scepter of Neptune, but even the 
most restless and daring adventurous spirit 
among us, if he had the opportunity, would most 
likely be quite content to leave such possibilities 
to the imagination only, rather than sever his 
connection with his old habitat, terra firma. 
Altogether it would appear, from a natural¬ 
istic standpoint, that our escape from a fish-like 
state of existence has been a very narrow one 
indeed. It is happily, however, a case of “all’s 
well that ends well.” 
Paul Smith Dead. 
Paul Smith, known to everybody who 
knows the Adirondacks, died on Dec. 15 in Mon¬ 
treal, at the age of eighty-seven years. He was 
born in Milton, Vt., and took up the life of 
hunter and guide in the Adirondacks more than 
sixty years ago. 
He saved most of his earnings and invested 
in lands and lakes. He was the head of the 
Paul Smith Hotel Company and owned the town 
of Paul Smith's. 
The aigrette is now worth more than its 
weight in gold. The latest quotation from 
Paris is 150 to 200 francs per ounce, or $80 per 
ounce in the New York market. 
MUSKOX IN THE BRONX ZOO. 
Photograph copyright by New York Zoological Society. 
