74 



CERViDJE. 



for comparison, and specific characteristics cannot of 

 course be founded on mere antler variation ; but I shall 

 as briefly as possible point out the differences that exist 

 between them, and show them to be in reality only very 

 distinctly marked varieties of one and the same species. 



The Reindeer has its modern range east and west, from 

 Kamtschatka to Norway. Pallas mentions it as existing in 

 the Ural Mountains in his time — namely, from 1760-80; 

 and according to Wilson,* " herds are still found among 

 the pine woods which stretch from the banks of the Oufa, 

 under the fifty-fifth degree, to those of the Kama. They 

 proceed even farther south, along the woody summits 

 of that prolongation of the Uralian Mountains which 

 stretches between the Don and the Wolga, as far as the 

 forty-sixth degree. The species thus advances almost to 

 the base of the Caucasian Mountains, along the banks of 

 the Kouma, where scarcely a winter passes without a few 

 being shot by the Kalmucks, under a latitude two degrees 

 to the south of Astracan. This remarkable inequality of 

 the polar distances in the geographical positions of this 

 species, according to the ditference of meridian, is of 

 course dependent on the laws which regulate the dis- 

 tribution of heat over the earth's surface, as explained 

 by Humboldt. It is well known that physical climates 



* Enc. Brit., Ed. 1857. 



