314 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



found them 50 years ago "only about the headwaters of the 

 White-face River and along the St. Louis River near Knife 

 Fall. There it was in 1884 not rare, though so shy as to be 

 secured with difficulty. Along the North Shore of Lake 

 Superior it is less shy and the animals may be seen feeding 

 quietly in groups along the upland meadows." G. S. Miller 

 (1897b) in 1896 found these caribou "very abundant on the 

 north shore of Lake Superior" and saw "heads, antlers, and 

 jaws of caribou at White River, Peninsula Harbor, Schreiber, 

 and Nepigon. A wet pasture among the hills a mile or more 

 northeast of Peninsula Harbor is a favorite feeding ground of 

 these animals. " At the west end of Lake Superior, in what is 

 now Quetico Provincial Park of Ontario, caribou are extinct, 

 "although this region was once the approximate southern 

 limit of its winter migration. There are no records in recent 

 years. Nash reported it as very shy but not rare in the White- 

 face and St. Louis River country of northern Minnesota as 

 late as 1894 . . . There is an abundance of its favorite 

 food, the caribou moss, Cladonia rangiferina, throughout the 

 region" (Cahn, 1937). A century ago there were caribou 

 in Chippewa County, northern Michigan (Schorger, 1940). A 

 recent report by BreckenridgeXl935) shows that a last remnant 

 of the woodland caribou still holds out "in the muskeg country 

 lying between Upper Red Lake and Lake of the Woods in 

 northwestern Minnesota. " In company with game officers he 

 spent from February 28 to March 3, 1935, investigating the 

 status of these animals. Of three adults seen at close range on 

 March 1, one retained its antlers. Evidence of at least six ani- 

 mals in this region was obtained, a number that is reported in the 

 August, 1939, Biological Survey census to have been increased 

 to 12, but the basis of this estimate is not given. The district 

 where these caribou live is now included in the Red Lake 

 Game Refuge, where they may be considered fairly safe except 

 from wolves which still are found in small numbers. The 

 refuge includes over 400,000 acres of land, "which is prac- 

 tically worthless, not only to the agriculturalist, but to the 

 forester" (Swanson, 1936). 



Finally, in the hope of building up the stock more rapidly, 

 W. T. Cox (1941), in charge of the refuge, arranged to introduce 

 new stock from Saskatchewan. With the aid of Indians, seven 

 calves and an adult bull were captured alive and after pre- 



