ORIGIN AND DIFFERENCES 99 



BARREN GROUND CARIBOU SPECIES 



Greenland Caribou, Rangifer groen-land'i-cus, Greenland 

 Coast. 



Barren Ground Caribou, Rangifer arc'ti-cus, Canadian 

 Barren Grounds. 



Grant's Caribou, Rangifer granti, Alaska Peninsula. 



Peary's Caribou, Rangifer pearyi, Ellesmere Land. 



In view of the tens of thousands of Barren Ground Caribou 

 that have been seen by white men and the thousands that 

 have been killed by and for them, the scarcity of definite 

 observations upon this group and of preserved specimens 

 is, as a whole, very unsatisfactory. At present, therefore, 

 the many undetermined questions regarding the component 

 parts of the group render it impossible to do much more than 

 to define the assemblage as a whole. 



In general terms it may be said that the average Barren 

 Ground Caribou is a close under-study of the average rein- 

 deer of Siberia and Lapland, and is also a smaller animal. 

 That all our Caribou have descended from the reindeer of 

 Asia and came to us by crossing Bering Strait on the ice, 

 seems more than probable. 



In surveyor's parlance, the head of Cook Inlet is the 

 "point of departure" of the Woodland Caribou from the rein- 

 deer Barren Ground type. It would be difficult to find on 

 land a clearer or sharper line of cleavage between two groups 

 of animals than that between Rangifer granti, of the Alaska 

 Peninsula, and Rangifer stonei of the Kenai Peninsula. One 



