CHAPTER IV. 

 Jhrmmarctta continued. 



rip HE Caribou of Canada (Cervus tarandus, var. Caribou) 

 is not to be confounded with the smaller variety 

 (Groenlandicus) which inhabits the more northern 

 regions lying between the sixty-fifth degree of latitude 

 and the coast of the Arctic Sea; and is an equally 

 distinct variety of the typical reindeer* of the Old World. 



As Sir John Richardson remarks! " Neither of these 

 varieties of Caribou has as yet been properly compared 

 with the European or Asiatic races of reindeer, and the 

 distinguishing characters, if any exist, are still unknown. 

 So great is their resemblance in habits and appearance to 

 the Lapland deer, that they have always been considered 

 to be the same species, without the fact having ever been 

 completely established." 



These remarks, written more than five- and- thirty 

 years ago, are still true, for no complete skeleton of 

 American Caribou exists in any European collection 



* Cervus tarandus. f Fauna Borealis Americana. I. 238. 



