American Big Game in its Haunts 



we have seen taking place in the southern deer, has 

 followed backward on the line of previous advance, 

 or, in biological language, appears to be a true case 

 of retrogressive evolution representing the fossil 

 series, as it were, in a mirror. 



The reindeer-caribou type, of the genus Rangi- 

 fer, agrees with American deer in having the ver- 

 tical plate of the vomer complete, and in having the 

 lower ends of the lateral metacarpals remaining, 

 but, like Ceruus, it has a brow-tine to the antlers. 

 Of its early history we know nothing, for the only 

 related forms which have yet come to light are of 

 no great antiquity, being confined to the Pleisto- 

 cene of Europe as far south as France, and are not 

 distinguishable from existing species. Until re- 

 cently it has been supposed that one species was 

 found in northern Europe and Asia, and two 

 others, a northern and a southern, in North Amer- 

 ica, but lately the last two have been sub- 

 divided, and the present practice is to regard the 

 Scandinavian reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) as the 

 type, with eight or nine other species or sub-species, 

 consisting of the two longest known American 

 forms, the northern, or barren-ground caribou (R. 

 arcticus) ; the southern, or woodland (R. cari- 

 bou} ; the three inhabiting respectively Spitz- 

 bergen, Greenland and Newfoundland, and still 



86 



