k 



' 



122 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



Britain and the south of France), and was in a state of 

 gradual migration to its present northern haunts. A 

 more essentially arctic deer th:in the elk, the reindeer, 

 in its southern extension, is found with the latter 

 animal co-occupant of the wooded regions which 

 succeed the desert plains on the shores of the Polar 

 ocean, termed " barren grounds " on the American 

 continent, and " Tundras " in Euroi:)0 and Asia. Its most 

 southern limit in the Old World is reached in Chinese 

 Tartary in lat. 50°. A fact mentioned in the Natural 

 History Eeview, in an article on the Mammalia of Amoor 

 land, may be here quoted as showing a singular meeting 

 of northern and southern types of animal life. It is 

 stated that the Bengal tiger, ranging northwards occasion- 

 ally to lat. 52°, there chiefly subsists on the flesh of the 

 reindeer, whilst the tail-less hare (pikji) a polar resident, 

 sometimes wanders south to lat. 48° where the tiger 

 abounds.* 



Following an ascending isotherm through Siberia and 

 Northern Russia, the reindeer comes down on the elevated 

 table-lands of Scandinavia to latitude G0°, " wherever," 

 as Mr. Barnard observes in " Sport in Norway," " the 

 altitude is above the limit of the willow and the birch." 

 From the latter country the animal was successfully in- 

 troduced into Iceland in 1770 (a similar attempt being 

 made at the same time to acclimatize it in Scotland, 

 which ended in failure), and htis since so multiplied as 

 to be regarded with disfavour by the inhabitants, who 

 care little for it as a beast of the chase, on account of the 



• Erman in his Siliorian travels, sjieakiii'T of the funna of Irkutsk, in 

 tlie trans-Bakalian districts, says : — " W<? see tlio Tunj,'u/o, niouiited on his 

 reindeer, passinj^ tlie IJiinu't witli his camel, and discover tlie tij^^i-rs of (,'hina 

 in the forests where tlie hear is taliing its winter sleep." 



