108 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 



that the size of all animals largely depends on the quantity and 

 the quality of the food with which they are supplied. This is 

 much better established than that the size of antlers is depend- 

 ent on the same cause. The question is, why are the larger 

 antlers grown on the smaller animal ? Is it due to accidental or 

 factitious causes or to a specific difference ? T perceive no cause 

 which could have produced this great development of the antlers, 

 which would not also have produced an equal development of the 

 whole animal. 



In habits, too, they differ very considei'ably. The larger spe- 

 cies are much less gregarious than the smaller. I do not know, 

 however, that I should make very much out of this, for it may 

 be accounted for by their greater numbers. The woodland 

 caribou are nowhere so abundant as the others, and are seldom 

 found in large bands ; two or three, or a dozen at most, being 

 found together, except in the interior of Newfoundland, where 

 their numbers are much greater, and there they are found in 

 larger herds than on any part of the continent, as far as I can 

 learn, except to the west of Hudson's Bay, where Richardson 

 informs us that large numbers assemble together and move in 

 bodies. Cormack, to whom we ai'e indebted for the first reliable 

 information of the habits of this deer in the interior of New- 

 foundland, tells us that they migrate in search of food in single 

 file, in herds of from twenty to two hundred each, and so the 

 whole country is cut up in every direction with their paths. We 

 have no account that the northern species travel in this order, 

 and they assemble in bands of thousands. 



We may, perhaps, attach more weight to the difference in their 

 habits of migration. The northern species are strictly migratory, 

 traversing in their migrations some ten degrees of latitude or 

 more from the Arctic Ocean, south, excepting where confined bv 

 physical barriers, as in Labrador. The woodland caribou are 

 migratory too, but to a less extent, or rather the habit is less uni- 

 versal. In Newfoundland, their migrations are necessarily lim- 

 ited in extent. On the continent, they are at liberty to go to 

 the Arctic Sea, but tliey stop short of the sixtieth degree of north 

 latitude, and probably but a small proportion reach that. The 

 migrations of many, if not of a large proportion, are jjrobably 

 from one part of some pretty large district adapted to their wants 

 to another part, as may be prompted by circumstances, either the 

 disturbed condition of the country, or the exigencies of food sup- 

 ply. Those living in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick probably 



