THE REINDEER 



959 



by the French-Canadian name caribou (a corruption of carreboeuf, literally "square- 

 ox"), it is considered that there are either one or two species distinct from the Old- 

 World form. Thus, whereas Mr. Caton regards the smaller North- American form, 

 known as the barren-ground caribou, as a distinct species, while he identifies the 

 larger southern kind, termed the woodland caribou, with R. tarandus, other writers, 

 like Dr. Hart Merriam, consider that both the American forms are entitled to rank 



REINDEER. 

 (One-fifteenth natural size.) 



as distinct species. We shall, however, follow the view that all kinds of reindeer 

 are merely local varieties or races of a single widely spread species. 



In the Old World, reindeer are found nearly as far north as the extreme limits 

 of land, while they extend from Scandinavia in the west to Eastern Siberia. In the 

 Ural region their southern limit reaches in the Kirghiz steppes to about the fifty- 

 second parallel of north latitude, and they are still to be met with in the wild state, 

 in the neighborhood of Orenburg. In European Russia they are found in the for- 

 ests of the Government of Kazan as far south as latitude 54 , and it is stated 



