THE GAME ANIMALS OF CANADA 71 



In 1911 what has been described as a new species of 

 mountain caribou, the Rocky Mountain caribou (R. for- 

 iidens), was described by HoUister.* 



This is a very large species, exceeding in size the other 

 species of mountain caribou. The teeth are conspicuously 

 large; the colour is very dark, ranging from dark brown to 

 black, and the antlers are stout and heavily palmated, more 

 like R. montanus but very different from R. osborni. The 

 species was found at the head of the Moose Pass branch of 

 the Smoky River, northeast of Mount Robson. 



As all these species of caribou, which are the reindeer of 

 the New World, occur almost entirely in Canadian territory, 

 with the exception of a few woodland caribou in Maine, 

 northern Minnesota, and northern Idaho and the caribou 

 in Alaska, a special responsibility lies upon us to take every 

 possible step to prevent their reduction to the extent that 

 their existence would be menaced. It is important, there- 

 fore, that all the provinces concerned in their protection 

 should take especial care that their game laws provide for 

 such protection as the local abundance of these caribou de- 

 mands; for otherwise we may lose in some regions a very 

 unique member of our big-game fauna. 



i 



ANTELOPE 



The history of the antelope, or ''pronghorn," in North 

 America, its only home, constitutes another of those trag- 

 edies in the story of our wild life. The most graceful and 

 the fleetest of our four-footed animals, it has suffered a fate 

 not unlike that of its companion of the wide prairies, the 

 buffalo, with the herds of which it formerly shared a wide 

 range, extending from the provinces of Alberta, Saskatche- 

 wan, and Manitoba in the north to Mexico in the south. 



* "New Mammals from Canada, Alaska and Kamchatka," by N. HoUister. 

 Smithsonian Misc. Collections, vol. 56, no. 35, pp. 1-8, 1912. See also 

 Canadian Alpine Journal, special no., pp. 37-39, 19i2. 



