INQUIKY INTO TIIEIK UIMGIN, F:TC. 1;)9 



reader will sec if ho turns to the Appendix and examines their special faunas there given. Iceland 

 on the other hand, has not a single mammal which has not been introduced by man except the Arctic 

 Fox and the supposed Lemming, and they, after having made their way from America to Green- 

 land, doubtless introduced themselves by travelling on ice-floes from Greenland. 



11. Tlie fauna not having come from Europe, and being most intimately related to American 

 types, how did it reach Greeidand ? First, how did it get from Siberia to America ? We have 

 seen, while speaking of the distribution of plants in America subsequent to the mioceno epoch, 

 that there is reason to believe that a channel of communication by dry land in the line of Bhering's 

 Straits and the Aleutian Islands existed subsequent to the close of the glacial epoch. If that was 

 good as a bridge for plants to cross, it was equally good for mammals. The Siberian tj'pe, with a 

 broader brow antler than the Lapland type, may have sent across a host of its species, which, in North 

 America became, by the effect of the altered condition of life, changed into the Woodland Ground 

 Caribou, a form nearer the Siberian than the Barren-Grouiid Caribou, whose range runs obliquely 

 from Bhering's Straits to Lake Superior, in the direction of the isothermal line. That species 

 underwent another change when it passed out of its woodlands into desolate grounds to the north- 

 east of Slave Lake and west and north of Hudson's Bay, and gave rise to the typical Barren- 

 Ground Caribou with the triangular-bladed brow antler. 



12. Although Greenland had by this time been eflfectually separated from America by Baflin's 

 Bay, in its southern parts, it is not so plain that a connexion may not still have existed to the 

 north. The space between Grinnell Land in America, and Washington Land in Greenland, at 

 the head of Baffin's Baj^ in 80° North longitude, is separated at Kennedy Straits by the most 

 trifling distance ; and we can T\'ell understand that if at a foi'mer time there was a land com- 

 munication thereabouts it would prove very useless to plants, few of which could live so far to the 

 north, but still might admit the passage of those which could bear the cold, as well as of the 

 Reindeer, and all the other American mammals which are found in Greenland. And such plants 

 are precisely the kinds which are found on the north coast of Spitzbergen, and which we should 

 now expect to find in the extreme north of Greenland. They are all of an extremely polar character, 

 and combined as they are with the strong infusion of species also found in America, I have come to 

 the conclusion that we must regard Greenland as ha^-ing had an extreme northern communication 

 with America after the glacial epoch. If we admit that, we should then find nothing more abnormal 

 in the character and distribution of its vegetation than we do now in America, where polar species 

 are gradually replaced as we go south by more temperate forms. 



Red Deer. (Cervus Ei.aphus.) The range of this noble animal extends over the whole of 

 Europe, and over the north of Asia as far as Lake Baikal and the Lena. Its distribution was 

 equally extensive in the post-glacial ej)och, its remains being not rarely found in the drift ; in 

 peat -bogs, bone-caves, bone-breccias, and recent loam and marl deposits. In Britain it is now limited 

 to the Highlands of Scotland, and a few parks or forests in England, where it is protected ; as 

 Whittlebury and Saulcey forests. It was fcjrmerly plentiful in all the royal forests, and it was 

 it which furnished sport to our ancient kings. At Dartmoor Forest, in Devonshire, its numbers 

 were so great in tlie days of tlie present Duke of Bedford's grandfatlu r, Hiat the fariiicrs pe- 

 titioned his grace to rid them of them f)n account of the injury they did to the crops. The 

 Duke sent down his stag-hounds from ^Vo^u^•n, the forest cliases took phu-c, and tlic deer wcro 



