The largest horns of which I believe there is record are owned by a taxidermist who purchased them; but the locality from which they came is unknown. Their breadth, measured up and down at the crevice of the boss, or, technically speaking, the breadth of palm, is 13¾ inches; the length of horns on outside curve, 30¼ inches. The next largest pair is in the British Museum and measures 13⅛ inches in breadth and 26¼ in length. The third is 12⅜ by 26¾, presented to the British Museum by J. Rae, an old time Hudson’s Bay Company factor, and got on the Barren Grounds. The next is 12½ by 27¼, the property of the Earl of Lonsdale, who picked up the head on his way down the Mackenzie River, several years ago. Warburton Pike holds the two next heads, one 11 by 26⅞, and the other 11 by 24¾. The largest head I killed is rather remarkable in respect to length of horn and thickness of the boss. Indian hunters who saw it, at all events, considered it most unusual. It measures 11½ by 27½; width of crevice, 1⅓ inch; thickness of boss at crevice, 3¾ inches.
The flesh of the musk-ox is exceedingly tough, and by no means pleasing to the taste, especially in the rutting season (August and September), when it is practically uneatable. There is a certain musky odor, but it is not so pronounced as generally said to be. In fact the only distinct musk-ox odor is got from breaking and crushing the dry dung. As indicative of this queer creature, I may add that musk-ox dung is but very little larger than and of very near the shape and color as that of the large hare. The flesh of the cow is by no means choice, but it is not bad; the flesh of the calf I found to be rather tasteless. The unborn calf is considered quite a delicacy, of which my Indians did not deny themselves merely because we had no cooking fire. They ate it raw, just as they took it from the mother’s stomach. Cows never give birth to more than one calf at a time, born in June.
MUSK-OX CALF
This specimen was captured March, 1901, east of Lady Franklin Bay, about 30 miles inland, by Indians sent out by Captain H. H. Bodfish of the whaler Beluga. After being exhibited in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, it was bought by Hon. William C. Whitney, who presented it forthwith to the New York Zoölogical Society. It died within a few months after. It was the first live member of the musk-ox family ever brought to the United States. (Photograph used by permission of the New York Zoölogical Society.)
On only two occasions have musk-oxen been brought alive into captivity in North America. One of these was an eighteen months’ old female caught east of Lady Franklin Bay, about thirty miles inland, by a party sent out by Captain H. H. Bodfish, of the whaler Beluga. This was exhibited at the Sportsmen’s Show in New York, where it was purchased by the Hon. William C. Whitney and presented to the Zoölogical Society of New York in March, 1902. The other was a younger specimen caught in Northeastern Greenland by Lieutenant Peary and brought out and presented to the Zoölogical Society by him in October of the same year. Both specimens, however, died within a few months. Up to now I believe something like a dozen live specimens have been taken out to the civilized world. All, however, at this writing, have died, except two or three. One is in a zoölogical garden at Copenhagen, another in a zoölogical garden at Berlin, and another is in England, owned by the Duke of Bedford, but exhibited, I am told, in London.
MUSK-OX
(Ovibos moschatus[5])