MAMMALS. 



285 



occipito-sphenoidal, are plainly marked. The last two superior and inferior molars are still con- 

 cealed in the alveoli. 



List of specimens. 



Biographical notes. — This deer, as its name implies, is fonnd on the vast barrens or tundras of 

 Arctic America. Where miles of moss-covered plains, broken by rolling hills or bare, rugged mount- 

 ains, with marshes and ponds in the hollows, characterize the landscape in the far north, this 

 Eeindeer is almost certain to be found, or to have been an inhabitant of the district only a 

 few years ago. In Alaska they are found along the Pacific coast from a point nearly opposite Ka- 

 diak Island west to the island of Unimak, and thence all around the Alaskan shore of Bering Sea 

 and the Arctic, in the treeless belt which borders all of this coast line. It is also numerous on 

 Nunevak Island, but on none of the other Bering Sea islands is it found. They also occur through- 

 out the interior of the Territory at various places, where the bush and tree covered areas give 

 place to open plains and sterile ridges. 



When the American Telegraph explorers visited Alaska in 1866-67, Eeindeer were found 

 everywhere, and herds containing thousands of individuals were no uncommon sight. They were 

 very abundant on the hills and valleys bordering upon Norton Sound, but to-day their former 

 abundance is indicated only by the number of antlers scattered over the country and the well- 

 marked trails worn on the hill-sides or leadiug across the valleys, showing where they passed from 

 one feeding-ground to another. 



When the Americans first obtained control of the Territory fire-arms were unknown among 

 the natives, and when first the natives obtained guns they kept the traders supplied with 

 meat at the rate of two charges of powder and ball for a deer. One winter, just preceding the 

 transfer of the Territory, an enormous herd of Eeindeer passed so near Saint Michaels that a 

 6-pounderloaded with buckshot was fired at them, killing and wounding a number of them. As 

 soon as fire-arms were introduced among the people they began to slaughter the deer with true 

 aboriginal improvidence. Hundreds were killed for their skins alone, and nearly as many more 

 were'shot down and left untouched, merely for the pleasure of killing. 



In the course of a few years this indiscriminate slaughter began to tell, and during the years 

 I passed at Saint Michaels and in exploring the country in which they were so abundant formerly, 

 I failed to see a single living Eeindeer. I saw their tracks a few times during my sledge journeys, 

 and each fall and winter from two to a dozen were killed within 50 miles of Saint Michaels. They 

 were very abundant on Nunevak Island in 1877 and 1878, but are nearly exterminated there now. 



Eskimo from over a hundred miles along the coast in each direction went to Nunevak in sum- 

 mer, and, in company with the natives resident on the island, took thousands of adult skins for 

 several seasons, until they suddenly found that Eeindeer were not left in sufficient numbers to 

 pay for hunting. 



Eeindeer are still very numerous on the peninsula of Aliaska and the adjacent district, but a 

 few winters since many of them died from some contagious disease, and I am told that they are 

 becoming scarcer every year there. They are still abundant also in the district about the head of 

 the Kowak Eiver and on the extensive barrens to the east and west of there, reaching to the Arctic 

 coast. The Eskimo of the coast and the Indians of the interior are hunting them so murderously 

 from two sides that it is only a question of a short time until they will be as scarce there as they 

 are elsewhere. 



In the summer of 1880 one man from Point Barrow took about five hundred skins, and many 

 others took nearly as large a number. Only a few stragglers now remain on the Kaviak Peninsula 

 and in the country between the Yukon and Kuskoquim Elvers. 



Where these deer are numerous they have a habit of migrating from one distri<.',t to another at 

 uncertain times and for no apparent reason, so that a place where they are plentiful one season may 



