Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/708

688 combined in one and the same animal. The musk-ox (Fig. 8) furnishes us with an example of this sort. This animal is in some respects so much like a sheep, and in others so much like an ox, that naturalists have named its genus Ovibos, the first part of the word meaning sheep, and the latter part meaning ox. The musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) inhabits the barren ground of North America, and is about the size of a two-years-old heifer. Its horns are close together on the top of the head, whence they curve outward, down-ward, and thence upward. The body is covered with long pendent hair, and the color is brownish-black. This hair or wool might be made very serviceable in the manufacture of useful fabrics, if it could be obtained in sufficient quantity. The musk-ox lives mostly in herds of a score or more, and, contrary to what we would naturally suppose, it runs with great speed, and climbs rocky hills with facility. The flesh of the young animals is very good, but that of the older ones is too strongly impregnated with musk to be palatable to white men, although the Indians and Esquimaux may not seriously object to it.



It is much to be regretted that the musk-ox is so rarely preserved in our museums. It is exceeding difficult to secure a specimen, as almost every one which is killed by the natives is immediately devoured by them. The food of this animal consists of grasses in the summer. and lichens in the winter, the latter being obtained by scraping the snow from the ground. On this food they keep in remarkably good condition. It may be added here that only one species of musk-ox is now living; although their fossil remains show us that in the past there have been other species of this animal, and in other parts of the world than America.

It is interesting to see how the same idea under specifically different forms is represented in the animal kingdom in the different portions of the earth. Take the idea which finds its expression in the ox, for example. In the southern part of Africa we find the ox in the