MAMMALIA, ‘ 239 
of New Caledonia seem to be altogether destitute of them. According to 
Pennant, they are not found on the islands that lie between Asia and America, 
but are numerous in Kamtschatka. The Koreki, a nation bordering on the 
latter country, are said to keep immense herds of rein-deer, some rich individuals 
possessing to the enormous extent of ten or twenty thousand. The limits assigned 
by writers to the rein-deer in America are liable to some uncertainty, because 
the term of caribou, by which they are generally known, has, particularly in 
Canada, been applied to very distinct species of deer*. Be this, however, as 
it may, there are two well-marked and permanent varieties of caribou that inhabit 
the fur-countries, one of them confined to the woody and more southern districts, 
and the other retiring to the woods only in the winter, but passing the summer 
on the coast of the arctic sea, or on the Barren Grounds, so often mentioned in 
this work. The early French writers on Canada, and Jeremie, Ellis, Dobbs, 
Umfreville, and others, who have given an account of that part of the Hudson 
Bay Company’s possessions which lie to the southward of Churchill River, treat 
of the woodland variety only. Hearne’s descriptions of the rein-deer,.on the 
other hand, relate principally to the Barren Ground kind, with which he was 
thoroughly acquainted ; and it is of this variety that specimens have been brought 
home by the late arctic expeditions. Neither variety has as yet been properly 
compared with the European or Asiatic races of rein-deer, and the distinguishing 
characters, if any exist, are still unknown. Major Smith, indeed, observes that 
“ a probable distinction, by which some, if not all the varieties of caribou may be 
distinguished from the rein-deer of the old continent, is, that their horns are 
always shorter, less concave, more robust, the palm narrower, and with fewer 
processes than those of the former.” I have had but little opportunity of ascer- 
taining how far these remarks apply to the woodland variety of caribou, but I can 
with confidence say, after having seen many thousands of the Barren Ground kind, 
that the horns of the old males are as much if not more palmated than any antlers 
of the European rein-deer to be found in the British museums. The annexed cuts 
were made from drawings by Captain Back, of the antlers of two old buck 
caribou, killed on the Barren Grounds in the neighbourhood of Fort Enterprise. 
It is to be recollected, however, that the antlers of the rein-deer assume an almost 
infinite number of forms, no two individuals having them alike. 
* Thus, Mr. Henry, when he mentions Caribou that weigh 400lbs., must have some other species of deer in view. 
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