THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
of the ankles; upper side of tail, drab and slightly paler than the back; 
rump patch absent; other parts whitish (Merriam). The skull and horns 
are like those of an immature Scandinavian reindeer. I examined the 
skull and single antler of an adult caribou found in a glacier at the mouth 
of the Stikine River, and owned by Mr Gray of Wrangel, which seems to be 
identical with the above sub-species. Perhaps in former times this form 
extended its range to the mainland opposite. 
Range. Only found in the Queen Charlotte Islands and now probably 
extinct. This sub-species was described from the type of four other speci- 
mens now in the Provincial Museum, Victoria, B.C. Dr Merriam, however, 
considers it to be a species. 
In concluding this short survey of the caribou of the mainland and ad- 
jacent islands of North America, I have only attempted to come to some 
definite conclusion as to the position of local races and their approximate 
ranges. Whilst fully aware of the fact that these theories are open to criti- 
cism by the followers of the different groups of naturalists known famili- 
arly as “splitters ” and “lumpers,” I do not wish to be dogmatic but only 
logical. It is evident, however, to all who make a serious study of any 
animal in all its varying phases under different conditions, that none of 
these local races of reindeer on the American continent are species as our 
friends across the Atlantic have described them, but are at the most only 
sub-species of the type first described, namely T. r. typicus of Scandinavia, 
On this point I am quite in agreement with Mr Lydekker who says 
(“Field,” Dec. 6, 1902): 
“ American naturalists regard all these local forms as distinct 
species, but in a work on the game animals of Europe, Northern Asia, 
and America published last year (at which date six of these American 
forms had been described) I ventured to class all of them as local 
races of the species typified by the reindeer of Scandinavia. And 
as new forms, some of which tend in many respects to connect the 
extreme modifications presented by the barren-ground and wood- 
land reindeer, are described, I am more and more convinced that 
this has most to be said in its favour. Not that I would go so far as 
Dr H. Winge, of Copenhagen, who, in a recently published paper 
on the mammals of Greenland, declines to regard any of these local 
races as entitled to separation, for I think that many of them are 
perfectly well defined forms (and I am about, elsewhere, to add to 
their number by describing one from Novaya Zemlya); but I do 
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