Royal Physical Society. 361 



to been the generally received opinion that these animals mi- 

 grate to the southward, on the approach of winter, to lands 

 where the cold is less intense and the pasturage more abun- 

 dant, an opinion formed from the writings of distinguished 

 Polar voyagers who formerly wintered amid the icy solitudes 

 of the North ; but the experience of four winters enables me 

 to speak from the result of observations in contradistinction 

 to this. In the Prince of Wales' Strait rein-deer were seen 

 in January — our distant position from the shore not en- 

 abling us to hunt during the winter; and in the Bay of Mercy, 

 for two successive winters, they were constant inhabitants of 

 the land, and were killed throughout the winter months of the 

 coldest season in the records of arctic voyaging. How far the 

 migratory habits of the animal may be established in a more 

 southern latitude on the coast of America, in their instinctive 

 resort to localities where pasturage may be more abundant, I 

 shall not attempt to decide ; but this I will say, that from the 

 more distant lands of the Polar Sea they do not migrate on 

 the approach of winter, but remain there constant inhabitants. 

 I have remarked, however, that as the season of thaw sets in 

 (May and June), coeval with the calving of the does, these ge- 

 nerally resort to the ravines and valleys bordering the coast, 

 where the pasturage is so much more abundant."* 



These narratives of the habits and food of the animal at 

 different periods, and in different regions, are sufficiently dis- 

 cordant to induce us to pause before coming to an opinion 

 upon them. They show the necessity of further observa- 

 tions, and indicate the points to which attention should be 

 directed. Their tendency, on the whole, however, is in fa- 

 vour of what appears to me the necessary inference to be 

 drawn from the horns. To the statements of the foregoing au- 

 thors, where opposed to this view, I reply by pointing to the horns 

 themselves. Not only is the ploughshare there, but it is evident 

 it has been much and hard used ; the edges are all rubbed off, and 

 the inequalities smoothed down; and it is plain that this cannot 

 have been done by removing snow in the summer-time, when it 

 is all melted. From the specimens I have received I draw the 



* Loc. cit., p. 276. 



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