Re: The first Swedes + seed

From: Daryl Krupa (icycalmca_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/13/05 

Date: 12 Feb 2005 20:37:28 -0800

David B wrote:
> Daryl Krupa wrote in message
> <1108190618.590592.34850@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>...
> >
> > Okay, it's possible that some veteran of the French
> >trading post near Churchill wrote up a travelogue that
> >included a reference to "oxar och boskap" ("oxen and
> >livestock"? "oxen et bétail"?) that was read by
> >someone-or-other in some variation, perhaps after a
> >confusion with bison and/or domestic cattle was
> >introduced into a later edition, who then related the
> >account to somebody else, and eventually Kalm, whose
> >French was imperfect, heard about it during a drinking
> >party
>
> Not exactly. Kalm had evidently read Jeremie's account
> in the "Recueil des voyages au nord", including the
> details of musk-oxen (and the picture with the caption
> linking Hudson Bay and Mississippi valley wild bovines)
> so at the "drinking party" he asked M. le Duc whether
> he had seen such things himself.

  David B.:
  Aarrgghh.
  Okay, so Kalm had previously read Jeremie's account in
Bernard's "Recueil". I stand corrected.
  But still, Kalm probably got the account at least
fourth-hand
(Kelsey --> ? --> Jeremie --> Bernard --> Kalm).

  That picture that you refer to would be this one, right?

http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/mediator.exe?F=C&L=02300720&I=33

  Not a musk-ox.

  I still have problems with Jeremie's description;
on pages 19 and 20 of this English translation,
Jeremie says that

"
The oxen have very short legs. so that their wool
always drags along the ground when they walk, and
this so confuses their appearance that even when
only a short distance away, it is difficult to
tell which end is the head.
"

  Besides the fact that the wool does _not_ drag
on the ground (as mentioned in the footnote on
the bottom of page 20), I never had any trouble
determining which end was the head end.
  The wool is not left on the ground because it
drags on the ground, but because in spring they
begin to shed it (it must be itchy), and it hangs
from the guard hairs in strands, and they
roll on the ground to rub it off, just as bison
do:

http://www.geocities.com/ldybg59/alaska/muskox3e.jpg

http://www.well.com/~wolfy/Alaska/0524/0023-199905240957.jpg

http://www.nahanni.com/Media/quarterlyNewsletter/2000-Winter/muskox.jpg

  If you approach them closely, they invariably
face towards you, showing their horns:

http://www.lksd.org/tununak/musk_ox.html

http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/rbs/pub/mar00/needle3.jpg

  The females' horns are smaller than the males,
even so, Jeremie's description of a pair of horns
weighing 60 pounds (which would have be some lesser
weight than 60 English pounds, as they are not bone,
but rather keratin, the same material your
fingernails are made of; the skull-with-horns of a
mature bull that I have certainly weighs less than
60 English pounds) would seem to belie the
indeterminate-head-end problem mentioned by Jeremie,
unless he was very myopic, in which case all of his
observations must be called into question.

http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/cocoon/peel/13/21.html
http://peel.library.ualberta.ca/cocoon/peel/13/22.html

  Pic of a musk ox at a distance:

http://web.hulteen.com/eric/images/deadhorse/large/musk_ox.large.jpeg

  A grouping of cows and calves:

http://www.mst.dk/udgiv/Publications/2001/87-7944-977-8/html/images/fig69.jpg

  A very young, solitary bull might be a problem, because the horns are
small but this would be a special case:

http://www.jovial.on.ca/vica/Arctic/Grise/MuskOx2.jpg

  Older bulls have grizzled faces:

http://www.huntingiceland.com/grlnd/greenland_musk-ox.jpg

  They'd have to be about this far away before the
undefined-head-end problem would arise:

http://www.nwarctic.org/Schools/Deering%20School%20Web%20Site/HS/Class%20with%20Musk%20Ox%20on%20way%20back.JPG

  If nothing else, the prominent hump (not mentioned
by Jeremie) should be a definite indicator of the
head end, unless one had never seen a live specimen
or a whole carcass or a skeleton, but rather just
skins and skulls, as was probably the case with
Audubon and Henry Johnson, who also do not indicate
a prominent hump:

http://www.minniesland.com/images/folioprints/Quadsofna/muskoxwhole.jpg

http://pre1900prints.com/WildAnimals/muskoxcapebuffaloyak.htm

  Note the long bony protrusions of the hump,
extending up from the thoracic vertebrae in the
lower-right corner of this pic (pelvis in centre
of pic):

http://mk31.image.pbase.com/u42/plbh/large/27613119.8206_ph.jpg

  Carcass, with hump architecture visible:

http://www.pbase.com/plbh/image/37400952

  Skin in front of a fireplace, with no hump visible:

http://www.arcticinuitart.com/image/stone/musk_ox_rug_1.jpg

  So, on the basis of three features of musk oxen
that Jeremie got not-quite-right, I must be very
suspicious of his having ever seen them in the wild.
  I still think that he might have gotten their
geographical location wrong, too (i.e., just north of
the mouth of the Churchill River).

  If Jeremie were to have created his own drawings,
perhaps he would have produced something like these:

http://dancivagallery.dk/zoo7.html
http://dancivagallery.dk/zoo10.html

  M. Jeremie, regardement le charge a votre
plagiarisme de les lettres des Henri Kelsie
et amis,
"J'accuse"!

> [snip lots of interesting stuff- thanks for that Daryl]

  C'est n'est pas grave; mon plaisir, Mon Seigneur.

-
Daryl "Méthodiqué" Krupa

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