270 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



were imported into eastern Massachusetts and ostensibly 

 maintained for breeding and experimental purposes, until it 

 developed that the pine grove in their spacious and well- 

 guarded paddock concealed a large illicit still! 



North of the United States- Canadian Boundary this race 

 of elk extended its range in former times to about latitude 60 

 nearly to Lake Athabaska but was driven back in the last 

 century. Nevertheless there are still "some numbers in East 

 Kootenay district, British Columbia, where they are hunted 

 to some extent . . . Some small herds of typical Rocky 

 Mountain elk have within the past few years been demon- 

 strated to occur on some of the southern tributaries of Nelson 

 River in northeastern British Columbia" (Anderson, 1939b). 

 They are, however, apparently now gone from the Peace River 

 region where they formerly occurred. In a manuscript report 

 of Harry Snyder to the Canadian Secretary of the Interior, 

 as communicated by Dr. Francis Harper, the former tells of the 

 discovery of a herd of 150 to 200 wapiti on the Prairie and 

 Henry River watersheds of northern British Columbia, an area 

 comprising 750 to 800 [Psquare] miles, about 500 miles north of 

 the nearest known area now inhabited by elk. 



MANITOBA WAPITI 

 CERVUS CANADENSIS MANITOBENSIS J. G. Millais 



C\ervus\ c\anadensis\ manitobensis J. G. Millais, The Gun at Home and Abroad, vol. 4, 

 p. 281, 1915 ("Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan," Canada). 



The elk in the most northerly part of its range in North 

 America are "apparently larger and duller colored than typical 

 canadensis; not so large or light colored as nelsoni of the Rocky 

 Mountains. In summer rich chestnut brown, darker on head 

 and neck and belly; in winter somewhat lighter. The name 

 manitobensis, applied to this northern animal by Millais in 

 1915, is regarded as valid by Bailey (1935) for the race found 

 in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and presumably still farther 

 to the westward. Its precise area of distribution, however, 

 is somewhat uncertain. In former times the wapiti, whether of 

 this race or nelsoni, ranged to the Rocky Mountains on the 

 west and northwestward, to the plains of Peace River, where 

 Alexander Mackenzie found it in abundance near the trading 

 post that he established at the mouth of Smoky River in the 



