102 HOOFED ANIMALS 



an army of cavalry on a march. This is most noticeable on 

 the Canadian Barren Grounds, which, by reason of its summer 

 pasturage and the absence of water barriers, encourages the 

 display of natural instinct. The observations of several 

 travellers north of the Great Slave Lake have resulted in the 

 belief that "in spring the Barren Ground Caribou seek the 

 coast of the Arctic Ocean, and remain near the salt water until 

 about September." But this idea is much too circumscribed. 



The explorations of Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, of the Canadian 

 Geological Survey, have proved conclusively that the univer- 

 sal herd of the Great Slave Lake region does exactly as did 

 the universal buffalo herd of 1871. It moves northward in 

 spring for a given distance only, stops at will, spends the sum- 

 mer and in the early winter moves southward. On July 

 30, 1893, Mr. Tyrrell saw a vast assemblage of Barren Ground 

 Caribou at Carey Lake (Latitude 62° 10' and Longitude 102° 

 45'), nearly 500 miles from the arctic coast. A herd of sev- 

 eral thousand animals was composed of females with young 

 fawns, young females and males of all ages, the lofty antlers 

 of the latter being noticeably prominent. This herd was then 

 only sixty miles north of the southern edge of the Barren 

 Grounds. 



The most impressive published description of a Caribou 

 migration is from the pen of Mr. Warburton Pike. It is a 

 relation of what he saw on Lake Camsell, sixty miles north 

 of the eastern end of Great Slave Lake, in 1889, and refers 

 to the southward movement to the timbered regions, where 

 the lichens growing upon the trees afford subsistence in winter, 

 when the ground mosses are buried under snow and ice. 



