350 Proceedings of the 



of opinion certainly is in favour of its being merely a va- 

 riety, and not a species. Sir John Richardson himself treats 

 it as a variety ; but at the same time he says (Fauna Bo- 

 reli- Americana, vol. i.), " The rein-deer or caribou of 

 North America are much less perfectly known (than the 

 European). They have, indeed, so great a general resem- 

 blance in appearance and manners to the Lapland deer that 

 they have always been considered to be the same species, 

 without the fact having ever been completely established ;" 

 and again, in speaking of the two North American varieties 

 which he describes, — viz., the Barren Ground caribou, and 

 the Woodland caribou, he says, " Neither variety has as yet 

 been properly compared with the European or Asiatic races 

 of rein-deer, and the distinguishing characters, if any, are 

 still unknown." Colonel Hamilton Smith, in Griffith's edition 

 of Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, had previously spoken much in 

 the same doubtful way, but still had not ventured to erect the 

 varieties into species. He said, " The North American rein- 

 deer or caribou are still very imperfectly known. There ap- 

 pear to be three varieties, one or more of which may actually 

 form different species." The most recent evidence on the 

 point, however, is that of Dr Gray, who, in his Catalogue of 

 the Specimens of Mammalia in the British Museum (Un- 

 gulata furcipeda), 1852, has included the North American 

 rein-deer, along with the Lapland rein-deer, under the old 

 name of Tarandus rangifer, noticing them only as varieties. 

 It does not matter whether we take this as an evidence of the 

 views of naturalists in general at that date, or merely as the 

 expression of the opinion of Dr Gray himself. No one ought 

 to oppose the general opinion of concurrent naturalists, or the 

 individual opinion of such a man as Dr Gray (admittedly one 

 of our first living mammalogists), without at least distrusting 

 his own judgment, and carefully weighing the arguments for 

 and against the opinion which they have sanctioned by their 

 authority ; and it is only after having done so, to the best of my 

 ability, that I have come to a different conclusion. 



The grounds on which these naturalists retain the American 

 as part of the European species are wholly negative. They 

 do not find any differences sufiicient to constitute specific cha- 



