We shall occasionally turn aside from the monuments of Art in the British Museum to notice some of the specimens in the collection of Natural History. Stuffed skins and skeletons are, of course, much less interesting, both to the scientific student of zoology and to the ordinary observer, than the living animal, retaining his natural habits, as far as they can be preserved, in a menagerie. But, at the same time, a stuffed skin affords a much better notion of the animated creature than the best drawing; and, in some cases, the living specimen cannot be procured, or kept alive, in this country. In such cases we are compelled to resort to such preserved specimens as that of the _musk-ox_, on the great staircase of the Museum. This specimen is very faithfully represented in the above wood-cut. The animal, of which this skin was once a part, was shot by some of the persons accompanying Captain Parry, in one of his expeditions to the Polar Seas; and was presented to the Museum by the Lords of the Admiralty. The appearance of the musk-ox, as the visitor will observe, is strikingly different from that of the common black cattle of Great Britain. Its limbs are singularly short,--its crooked horns are broad and flattened,--long thick hair covers the whole of its trunk, hanging down nearly to the ground,--and its short tail, bending inwards, is entirely hidden by the long hair of the rump and hind quarters. It will be noticed that the hair is particularly thick under the throat, looking something like a horse’s mane inverted. The adaptation of the structure of this animal to the frozen regions which he inhabits, offers one of the most striking illustrations of design which the natural world exhibits. The shortness of the creature’s limbs prevents that exposure of the trunk to the snow-storms and the cold, which would result from a greater elevation; whilst he is more effectually protected from the severity of the seasons by the dense mass of hair with which his whole body is covered, and which, in winter, becomes a thick woolly coat, beneath the long straight hair which forms his outer garment. The Author of the Appendix to Parry’s Second Voyage, in noticing the remarkable projection of the orbits of the eyes in this species, considers that their formation is necessary to carry the eye of the animal clear beyond the large quantity of hair required to preserve the warmth of the head.