86 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 
A8 caribou are possessed of great vitality, they require 
heavy hitting: so a rifle of large calibre ought to be em- 
ployed by the sportsman. 
Although there are upon the American continent two 
very distinctly marked varieties of the reindeer, I can not 
adopt the idea of many travelers that, so conspicuous is 
their dissimilarity, they are entitled to be considered dis- 
tinct species. 
We are all aware that difference of climate, local causes, 
and abundance or paucity of food work wonderful altera- 
tion on animal life—more especially in regulating their stat- 
ure; for instance, the moose-deer of Labrador seldom ex- 
ceeds sixteen and a half hands, while that of Nova Scotia 
and New Brunswick has been known to attain twenty-one or 
even twenty-two hands (vide Audubon). Now the grounds 
that are taken for asserting that there are two species of 
caribou are exactly the same, and would equally justify the 
decision that there are two species of elk. The woodland 
caribou leads a life of comparative idleness among the 
dense swamps and pine-clad hills, where food is constantly 
to be found in abundance. The barren caribou, on the oth- 
er hand, inhabits the immense flats or mountain ridges close 
to the Arctic Circle, where vegetable growth is sparse, and 
little shelter afforded from the biting cold winds and snows 
peculiar to so high alatitude. So great often are the straits 
the latter variety are submitted to from the inhospitable 
nature of their habitat, that in some districts they are com- 
pelled to become migratory to obtain the necessaries of life. 
Is it, then, to be wondered at that there should be a mark- 
ed difference in size between the inhabitant of the shelter- 
ed forest and the wanderer upon the barren upland waste ? 
Another strange circumstance has often struck me— 
viz., that although the reindeer has for ages been domes-. 
ticated in Europe and Asia, employed both to draw and 
