376 Note on the Races of Rein Deer. [No. 4, 



Note on the Maces of Rein Deer. — By Edwaed Blytii. 

 (Concluded from page 306.) 



In a foot-note to p. 283, I briefly remarked on the races of Bein 

 Deer, and stated that I would recur to the subject in the sequel. 



Mr. Andrew Murray of Edinburgh has been engaged in investi- 

 gating the question, whether the Eein Deer of Lapland differs from 

 the barren-ground race of N. America, and he has figured what he 

 assumes to be characteristic horns of each race, suspecting that the 

 broad "vertical plate into which the brow-antler commonly expands in 

 the barren-ground Caribou, to be peculiar to that race (Edin. New 

 JBh. Joicrn., April, 1858). In a Lapland specimen, however, in the 

 Society's museum, received from that of Christiania (and not impro- 

 bably the head of a wild animal), the horns more nearly resemble 

 the American horns figured by Mr. Murray ; and I therefore greatly 

 doubt his supposed distinction between the barren-ground Caribou 

 and the toild Lapland Deer. 



Referring also to the detailed notice of the wild Eein Deer of 

 northern Scandinavia, in Mr. L. Lloyd's ' Scandinavian Adventures' 

 (II, 193), I find that this author remarks (probably on the authority 

 of Prof. Nilsson), that the horns of the wild Eein Deer of Europe 

 " are large and slender, with brow-antlers which are hroad and pal- 

 mated." But the horns of the wild animal of arctic Europe would 

 seem to be rare in museums ; while those from America are exclusively 

 the production of wild animals, and, as a rule, are undoubtedly picked 

 specimens chosen from a considerable number. Hence, perhaps, the 

 difference alleged or suggested by Mr. Murray. Moreover, in no 

 other species of Deer are the horns so extraordinarily variable ; where- 

 fore, to arrive at a fair conclusion, it must be necessary to examine a 

 considerable number of unselected horns of the wild animal from 

 both regions.* 



* The Cervus corotiatus of Geoffroy was founded on a very remarkable pair, 

 supposed by him to have belonged to a peculiar species of true Elk (or Moose) ! 

 Vide figure in Griffith's English edition of the Regne Animal (IV, 96), and also 

 in Cuvier's Ossemens Fossiles together with a gradation of other horns referring 

 them clearly to the Rein Deer : this curious pair consisting of broad palms with- 

 out any beam, and dividing anteriorly into spillers. 



