Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/120

116 paper, manilla rope yarn, a hard lump of woven texture, horse-dung, macintosh sheeting, canvas, basaltic pebbles and bear blubber in the stomachs of thirty bears he examined. But the bear's usual food is seal, and although he will devour every part of a seal, his particular fancy is the skin and blubber.

Of land mammals, musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) and reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) are the most noteworthy and useful to man. The musk-ox is specially interesting, being the single representative of its genus. It is more nearly allied to the sheep than the ox. It is about two-thirds of the size of the American bison, but its long coat of hair makes it look larger. It inhabits the northern parts of the Canadian mainland, and the islands to the north of Canada as far as Grinnell Land, as well as the coasts of Greenland. In prehistoric or pleistocene times the musk-ox extended to the north-west in Alaska, and at a still earlier period, when North America was colder than now, the musk-ox ranged as far south as Kansas and Kentucky. Musk-ox bones have been also found in the frozen soil of Siberia, as far east as the Obi. It formerly existed as far south as Wurtemburg, while the Pyrenees and Alps seem to have marked the southern limits of its range. The skulls have been dredged up from the Dogger Bank. Unlike the bear, the