Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 1 (1877).djvu/382

356 ice as the passage now is between Banks' Land and Melville Island, there could have been no great obstacle to prevent the passage of the Musk-ox from the Old World to the New; but whether its course of migration was from Asia to America, or contrariwise, there can be no question that on the latter continent it found a congenial home. Its remains have been discovered in greater or less quantities from Escholtz Bay on the west to the shores of Lancaster Sound, whilst the animal still inhabits the Barren-lands of the American continent. Even in this wilderness, sparsely inhabited by Eskimo, its southern range is slowly contracting, whilst, according to Richardson, the Mackenzie is now its western limit. Melville Island and other lands to the north of the American continent have proved a safe asylum to the Musk-ox, and there it will continue to propagate its species, undisturbed save by the casual appearance of Arctic voyagers. From the islands of the Parry group its range northwards across the eightieth parallel into Ellesmere and Grinnell Land, as high as the eighty-third parallel to the shores of the Polar Sea, is extremely natural; and Robeson Channel, which has presented no obstacle to the progress of the Lemming and Ermine, has also been crossed by the Musk-ox, the 'Polaris' Expedition as well as ours finding it in Hall Land. After crossing the strait between the American islands, and Greenland, the Musk-ox appears to have followed the coasts both in a northerly and southerly direction, its range in Greenland to the southward being stopped by the great glaciers of Melville Bay. At one time it must have been abundant on the West Greenland coast as far south as the seventy-eighth parallel, for Dr. Kane found numerous remains in the vicinity of Renssellaer Bay, and Dr. Hayes found a skull in Chester Valley at the head of Foulke Fiord. During the single day we explored in the neighbourhood of that locality two skulls were found by members of our Expedition. The destruction of these animals would, I think, rapidly follow on the appearance of the Eskimo at Port Foulke; for I imagine few animals are less fitted to elude the wiles of the hunter. There can be no question that the Musk-oxen found by the Germans on the east coast of Greenland are descendants of those that crossed Robeson Channel, rounded the north of the Greenland continent, and extended their range southward until they met with some physical obstruction that barred their further progress, as has also been the case on the western shore of