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Show 352 MR. R. BROWN ON THE MAMMALS OF GREENLAND. [May 28, must have been on the west side. The east was even more unknown in his day than now, and he was certainly never round Cape Farewell. The Musk-Ox has, therefore, no right to a place in the fauna of Danish Greenland, nor do I believe that at any time it was an inhabitant of that portion of the continent. . Recent discoveries have, however, shown it to be, with the strongest probability, an inhabitant of the shores of Greenland north of the glaciers of Melville Bay. Dr. Kane met with numerous traces of it in Smith's Sound; and his successor, Dr. Hayes, found at Chester valley in the same inlet, among Eskimo kjcekkenmceddings, the skull of a Musk-Ox. Eskimo tradition describes the animal as at one time common along the whole coast, and they affirm that it is vet occasionallv to be met with. No longer ago than in the winter of 1859 a hunter of Wolstenholme Sound, near a place called Oo-meak, came upon two animals, and killed one of them*. I think, therefore, that we may with some authority assume that the Musk-Ox is not yet extinct in Greenland. 11. RANGIFER TARANDUS (Linn.), Baird. Var. grcenlandicus, Kerr (Linn. 1792, p. 297). Grcenl. Tukto (tootoo) ; f, Pangnek ; $, Kollauak. I will not here enter into any discussion of the vexed question of the identity of the European and American Reindeers, or whether the Greenland Reindeer is specifically distinct from the A-V.merican species; suffice it to say that the heading of this note sufficiently expresses m y views on the subject, after very excellent opportunities of comparison and study, and that I consider the Greenland Reindeer only a climatic variety of the European species. I have, moreover, seen specimens of Reindeer horns from Greenland which could not be distinguished from European, and vice versa. On the whole, however, there is a slight variation, which may be expressed by the trivial name to which I have referred at the commencement of these remarks-)-. It is found over the whole country, from north to south £, but not nearly so plentiful as it used to be. Indeed it is fast on the decrease, on account of the unmerciful way in which it is slaughtered by the natives for the skin alone, as is the buffalo in America. The skins are a great article of commerce ; sometimes they sell in Copenhagen at from 3 to 7 rigsdaler (6s. 9d. to 15s. 9d.) each, according to the quality. (The natives get in Greenland only 72 skillings (1*. 6d.) for them). The yearly production used to be in the summer time from 10,000 to 20,000, but it is now on the decrease. Dr. Hayes fed his party luxuriously on them all winter at Port Foulke in Smith's Sound, not many miles from where Kane's * Hayes's Voyage towards the North Pole (1866), p. 390. t Vide Murray, Edinb. N e w PhilosophicalJournal, Jan. and April, 1859; Newton in Proc. Zool. Soc. 1864; Murray, Geog. Distrib. of Mammals, p. 150 et seq.; Baird, North Am. Mammals; id. U. S. Pat, Office Rep. (Agric.) 1851 (1852), p. 105. | Rarer on the east coast (apparently). |