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 and 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. 
X 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, 
