182 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



This development of one or both of the brow antlers is consid- 

 ered by some of the European naturalists to be so characteristic 

 of the American Woodland Caribou that they rely upon it alone 

 to distinguish the American Woodland from the Barren Ground 

 Caribou, as well as from the old-world species. Several mag- 

 nificent heads of the Barren Ground Caribou from Labrador, in 

 the Smithsonian at Washington, show one heavily palmated brow 

 antler, and consequently such palmation cannot be confined to 

 the Woodland group. Among the Newfoundland species both 

 brow antlers are occasionally heavily palmated, and almost sym- 

 metrical. This double palmation occurs in one out of six or 

 eight heads, but is much more rare in the Woodland Caribou of 

 the mainland, and apparently occurs but seldom among the Bar- 

 ren Ground Caribou. 



FOSSIL FORMS. 



The distinction between the two types referred to above as 

 the Barren Ground Caribou and the Woodland Caribou is found 

 not only among the existing species, but is clearly foreshadowed 

 in the fossil remains found in the pre-glacial and inter-glacial 

 deposits of the British Isles and continental Europe. The fossil 

 reindeer found in the oldest Pleistocene deposits in Norway, 

 Ireland, western and southern France, and in the Pyrenees are 

 practically identical with the existing Scandinavian species. The 

 Pyrenees were their extreme southern limit, and it is probable 

 that they appeared there only as winter migrants. 



In these deposits the antlers referable to the Barren Ground 

 group are round, slender, and long in proportion to the small 

 size of the animal, and the beam and the tines, including the 

 brow tine, are but little palmated. The antlers of the Woodland 

 Caribou group, on the other hand, are flatter, thicker, and more 

 heavily palmated, both on the beam and tines, especially the brow 

 antler, while the tine immediately above the brow antler, and cor- 

 responding to the bez-tine in the red deer (Ccrz'us), is elaborately 

 developed, and palmated in marked contrast to the same tine in 

 the Barren Ground group. The development of this tine, the 

 writer considers to he the most distinctive character separating 

 the two types. There are also important differences in the angle 

 of curve in the main beam. In Stone's Caribou this tine is of a 



