184 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
pre-glacial times, and that the former entered Europe from the 
Arctic regions at a much earlier period than the latter. The 
Woodland Caribou, on the other hand, entered Europe from 
Siberia, and probably originated in Northeastern Asia, together 
with much of the fauna common to the Eurasian and North 
American continents, so that although no Woodland Caribou 
exists to-day in Europe, and while there is very little evidence of 
their existence in eastern Siberia, it is probable that they entered 
North America from the old world over the land connection, 
_ which, until recent times, existed across Bering Straits; and it 
was by this connection that North America received many of its 
best known animals—the wapiti, the bison, the mountain sheep, 
the grizzly and brown bears, the wolverine, and the lynx. 
It may be noted in this connection that the fossil remains give 
us no good clew to the place of origin of the genus as a whole, 
but there is much negative evidence to indicate that it was in 
some Arctic land. In fact, all deer are clearly of northern origin. 
THE BARREN GROUND CARIBOU. 
In contrast to the east Siberian origin of the Woodland Cari- 
bou, the original centre of distribution of the Barren Ground 
Caribou appears to have been in the north Atlantic region. Pos- 
sibly this group entered America by way of Greenland. At 
present, species of the Barren Ground group are found through- 
out northern Scandinavia and Lapland, Spitzbergen and Nova 
Zembla, in suitable localities throughout Siberia, Alaska, the 
portions of North America east and west of Hudson Bay beyond 
the limit of tree growth, Greenland and the Arctic lands lying 
to the north of the American continent. 
The Scandinavian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is of course 
the earliest and best known, and is the type of the whole genus. 
The domesticated race is smaller than the wild animals which 
still persist in the more inaccessible regions of Lapland. This 
relatively small size of the domesticated in contrast to the wild 
races also holds good in Siberia. 
To the east of Lapland the reindeer extends throughout 
northern Russia and Siberia, in places as far south as the 54th 
parallel, and in the Ural regions as far south as the 52d parallel. 
Throughout this vast extent of country it is more than probable 
