THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLDS. 49 



instances the reindeer and musk-ox, there are forms yet 

 inhabiting the arctic and sub-arctic regions which may 

 be justly regarded as the remains of an ancient fauna 

 which once comprised many species now long since 

 extinct, and which with those already named, occupied a 

 far greater southerly extent of each of the continents 

 converging on the pole than would be possible under the 

 present climatal conditions of the world. With those 

 great types which have entirely disappeared before man 

 had recorded their existence in the pages of history, in- 

 cluding the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the most 

 abundant of the fossil pachyderms, whose bones so crowd 

 the beaches and islands of the Polar Sea that in parts the 

 soil seems altogether composed of them, the Ehinoceros 

 tichorinus, and others, were associated genera, a few 

 species of which lived on into the historic period, and 

 have since become extinct, whilst others, occupying 

 restricted territory, are apparently on the verge of dis- 

 appearance. " All the species of European pliocene 

 bovidae came down to the historical period,'' states Pro- 

 fessor Owen in his " British Fossil Mammals," " and the 

 aurochs and musk-ox still exist ; but the one owes its 

 preservation to special imperial protection, and the other 

 has been driven, like the reindeer, to high northern lati- 

 tudes." Well authenticated as is the occurrence of the 

 rangifer as a fossil deer of the upper tertiaries, the 

 evidence of its association in ages so remote, with Cervus 

 Alces, has been somewhat a matter of doubt. The elk 

 and the reindeer have always been associated in descrip- 

 tions of the zoology of high latitudes by modern natural- 

 ists, as they were when the boreal climate, coniferous 

 forests, and mossy bogs of ancient Gaul brought them 



