REINDEER AND ITS ORIGIN 5 



arctic American varieties than between the west European 

 and the Siberian reindeer. The assumption that the species 

 originated in Greenland or arctic America and thence spread 

 along old land connections east and west to Europe arid Asia, 

 is, therefore, not quite so unjustified 'as Dr. Stejneger * seems 

 to think. 



But we must not forget the possibility of the reindeer 

 having originated in the Old World. Dr. Brown f argues 

 that the barren- ground variety spread to America from 

 western Europe by way of a Spitsbergen-Greenland land 

 connection, while the other traversed Siberia, and crossed to 

 the New World by Bering Strait. In the more southern 

 parts of its range in America, new varieties may have 

 arisen, perhaps owing to changes in the natural sur- 

 roundings. Long cylindrical antlers were no doubt a dis- 

 advantage to reindeer in wooded districts, hence the beam 

 became reduced in length and increased in width in what is 

 known in America as the " woodland caribou." Some of these 

 varieties, or species as many American naturalists choose to 

 call them, intergrade to such an extent as to be difficult to dis- 

 criminate from one another. Thus Rangifer stonei is a form 

 of barren-ground reindeer living in Alaska, while Rangifer 

 osborni is a woodland form. Dr. Allen, who first described 

 them, considers them as well-marked species, while Mr. 

 Osgood,J during his travels in Alaska, finds that the differ- 

 ences between the two are all relative, that they are excessively 

 variable and rather intangible. The mountain caribou (Ran- 

 gifer montanus), originally described by Mr. Thompson 

 Seton, is considered by Dr. Allen to be allied to the wood- 

 land form, but distinguished from it in colour, size and shape 

 of antlers. Mr. Seton, || who has published a most instructive 

 map of the geographical distribution of the caribou in North 

 America, which has furnished me with the materials for the 

 map given in this work (Fig. 10), thinks that in future the 



* Stejneger, L., " Scharff's History of the European Fauna," 

 p. 112. 



t Brown, A. E., " North American Big Game," p. 87. 

 J Osgood, W. H., " North American Fauna," 33, p. 17. 

 Allen, J. A., " Mountain Caribou," pp. 8 & 9. 

 || Seton, E. Thompson, "Northern Animals, I.," p. 192. 



