148 HISTORY OF THE EUROPEAN FAUNA. 



in the Polar Regions. The facts of geographical 

 distribution teach us that in these regions there has 

 been a centre of origin within comparatively recent 

 geological times. I have on a previous occasion 

 drawn attention to the range of the Reindeer: that 

 it lives almost throughout the Polar lands, and that it 

 spreads into North America, Northern Europe, and 

 Northern Asia. We have, again, fossil proof that its 

 range extended down to the Pyrenees in Europe in 

 pleistocene times. But there is not a scrap of 

 evidence that it ever during any time occurred 

 farther south, either in Europe, Asia, or North 

 America. Its original home must therefore have 

 been in the Polar Regions, for if it had originated 

 either in Central Europe, Asia, or America, there is no 

 reason why it should not, in the natural course of 

 events, have extended its range to the south as well 

 as to the north. 



The Arctic Hare presents us with a very similar 

 case of distribution. Like the Reindeer, it inhabits, as 

 we have learned, the Polar Regions and the northerly 

 parts of the Old World and the New; but while we 

 have only fossil evidence of the former, more southerly, 

 extension of the range of the Reindeer, the Arctic Hare 

 furnishes us with a still stronger proof of its past 

 southward range in the survival of small isolated 

 colonies in some of the southern mountain ranges of 

 Europe and Asia. It is generally believed that the 

 occurrence of the Arctic Hare in these southern moun- 

 tains is a standing testimony to the severity of the 



