range with little trouble. Sometimes, however, they are unaccountably timid. . . . They seemed to take some time to realise that we did not belong to their world. But having once made up their minds, they showed even more terror than wild animals usually do. Each musk-ox gave us about two hundred pounds of meat, often most excellent, but occasionally tainted with the flavour that gives them their name. We failed to ascertain the source of this characteristic. It occurs in both sexes and at all ages; and, moreover, it is not peculiar to the musk-ox, for a haunch of reindeer presented to us by the governor of Egedesmunde possessed the very same flavour."
The musk-ox has been a most valuable asset to polar explorers. Without its existence the north and east coasts of Greenland could not have been unravelled as they have been, nor could exploration have been carried on so effectually in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
The reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is another not only striking but also useful Arctic animal, and one of the most widely distributed. Some consider there are two species, but that matters little just now; suffice it to say that the reindeer is found in almost every Arctic land, except Franz Josef Land, where however at one time it used to exist, since their horns
