160 SIXTH REPORT — 1836. 



Onlj^ two species of tliis order are common to the old con- 

 tinent and America, and tliese have the highest northern range, 

 nameljr, Cerims alces and tarumbis. If the ovis mnntcnia be, 

 as Cuvier hints, the same with the Siberian argali, it is a third 

 common species. The North American deer are still very im- 

 perfectly known, and a revision of the species would well repay 

 the labour of a naturalist who has an opportunity of seeing 

 them in a state of nature ; the deer of the Pacific coast in par- 

 ticular require investigation, as they are known only hy imper- 

 fect descriptions, no figures of them having been published nor 

 specimens brought to Europe*. The reindeer is the most 

 northern ruminating animal, being an inhabitant of Spitzbergen, 

 Greenland, and the remotest arctic islands of America. On the 

 Pacific coast it descends as low as the Columbia river, being, 

 however, much less common there than in New Caledonia. On 

 the Atlantic it exists as far south as New Brunswick, while in 

 the interior its southern limit is the Saskatchewan river. The 

 different varieties of reindeer ought to be compared with each 

 other, and detailed dissections of the American kinds are still 

 wanted. The southern range of the elk is the Bay of Fundj', 

 on the eastern coast, though it is said to have existed formerly 

 as far south as the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi ; but 

 this report is rendered uncertain by the name elk having been 

 applied in difterent parts of the country to different kinds of 

 deer. It frequents all the wooded districts up to the mouth of 

 the Mackenzie, in the 68th degree of latitude, but very seldom 

 appears in the prairies or barren grounds. The wapiti, or 

 cervus slrongyloceros, does not travel to any distance from the 

 prairie lands, on both sides of the Rocky Mountains, and not 

 further north than the 54th parallel. C. macrotis and lencurus 

 frequent the prairies of the Saskatchewan and Missouri, and, 

 according to report, the west side of the Rocky Mountains also. 

 C. virginiamis is found from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico ; 

 iiemoralis and mexicamis inhabit the latter country, the former 

 going southwards to Surinamf . The (mtilope furcifer abounds 

 on the prairies of the Missouri, Saskatchewan, and Columbia, 

 and is believed to range southwards to Mexico. It differs much 



* The following is a list of the deer of Columbia and New Caledonia fur- 

 nished to me by P. W. Dease, Esq., of the Hudson's Bay Company : moose- 

 deer (c. alces) ; rein-deer (c. tarandus) ; red-deer, or wawaskeesh (c. slrongy- 

 loceros) ; kinwailhoos, or long-tailed deer; mule-deer; juniping-deer, or cabree ; 

 fallow-deer, or che^Tellil. The specific names of the last four have not been sa- 

 tisfactorily ascertained. The antilope furcifer is named white-tailed c.ibree to 

 distinguish it from the jumping-deer, in which neither the tail, nor the rump, 

 is white. 



t LieiU.-Colonel 11. Smith, n Griffith's Cuvier. 



