THE ASIATIC REINDEER AND ELK 
O UR knowledge of the local races of reindeer and elk 
inhabiting Europe and North America is now considerable ; 
| and, beyond the “ buffer ” races which embrace characters 
belonging to one or more of the local races and whose 
acceptance as sub-species may always be subject to 
doubt according to the individual opinion of naturalists, 
they are now fairly well known and have been set forth in the present 
and previous volumes of this series. The same, however, cannot be said 
of the Asiatic races of reindeer and elk owing to great paucity of specimens 
in public and private collections. Horns and skulls of nearly all the local 
races of these Asiatic deer do exist in British collections; but skins of 
undoubted authenticity, with full data of locality, etc., are extremely 
rare, and in most instances have not been collected by sportsmen or 
naturalists. 
With regard to reindeer, Northern and North Central Asia are nearly as 
rich as North America, with the exception that whilst wild races occur 
over nearly the whole of the northern continent they in no way compare 
with the vast numbers that are domesticated and used by native tribes 
such as the Samoyedes, the Yenesei highlanders and forest dwellers, the 
Mongolian Chinese, the Tunguses, the natives of the Lena, Okhotsk, 
Kamchatka and the inhabitants of the Chukchi Peninsula. 
The reasons for this are apparent. By nature the Esquimaux and 
northern Red Indians of North America have ever been merely destroyers 
of game, although living for the most part and finding all the necessities of 
life in the reindeer (caribou). It is true the American Government* and 
Dr Grenfell in Labrador have set an example by teaching the natives of 
the north the advantages of preserving reindeer and using them as the 
Lapps, Samoyedes and Chukchi have done for centuries; but all the history 
of the past has established the fact that the Indians and the Esquimaux 
took no thought for the morrow and merely feasted in times of plenty 
and starved in times of scarcity. This method, owing to the abundance of 
reindeer at most seasons, has worked fairly well for these nomads; but 
the introduction of the modern rifle and the coming of the white man 
to the desolate shores of North America have caused such heavy inroads 
to be made on the game that, unless some methods of preservation or 
*The Canadian Government have recently sent a herd of European reindeer to Hudson’s Bay. 
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