MUSK OXEN: Bearded Ones of the Arctic

A handsome, intent look at the musk ox, the Arctic's largest land mammal, who happens to be more. closely related to goats than to oxen and has no musk glands whatsoever. Where Peter Mathiessen's older, more intimate appreciation (Oomingmak, 1967)focused on efforts to transplant the animals back to Alaska and Canada where they had become extinct, Rau is best on the herds' life on the Greenland ice cap--where they close ranks to defend themselves against wolves but are vulnerable to freezing rainfall, now increasingly a danger in a land that has previously been a frozen desert. Collins' muted aquatint etchings, which owe a debt to Oriental prints, capture the sense of Arctic snow and silence, and echo Rau's well-informed, affectionate concern.