THE REINDEER AND ITS PURSUIT 
R EINDEER are said to represent the oldest line of existing deer. 
The possession of defensive weapons, whether cranial or dental, 
in both sexes was doubtless a primitive character, and in the case 
of the reindeer both males and females possess antlers. In most 
cases of male deer the horns are first developed from nine to fif- 
teen months, but in the case of the reindeer they commence to 
form at four or five weeks after birth .The fact ,too ,that the young are unspotted 
is also said to be a specialized feature, although Mr Lydekker considers that 
this may “possibly be of late acquisition.” Yet it is hard to accept this, for no 
animal seems to have altered less in its osteological characters with the pas- 
sage of centuries. The skulls of reindeer found in northern Europe and dating 
from the Pleistocene age are in every way identical with those of to-day. 
The distribution of the reindeer is throughout the northern portion of 
the Holarctic region, but in the Pleistocene age it was abundant as far 
south as the Pyrenees, Central Germany, France, Great Britain, and 
Denmark. It is curious, therefore, that if the reindeer was of such ancient 
lineage its remains should not be found in the deposits of the later Pleisto- 
cene as are those of the red deer. Whether reindeer were ancient or modern 
inhabitants of the Arctic regions is somewhat doubtful. Some naturalists 
are of opinion that they are recent immigrants there, but Dr Scharff thinks 
that their original home was always in the north and that they wandered 
southwards when the climate became colder. 
Reindeer all over the northern world present an enormous amount of 
racial and individual variation, and yet when we come to study them 
closely we find that the individual variation is more or less constant, 
whilst the antlers themselves can never be compared with those of any 
other deer. What we may call fully developed horns, with both brows 
palmated, and furnished with a large number of points and large bays and 
tops, are rare in all races but occur more frequently in some local races 
than in others. These complete heads are more common in Newfoundland 
than any other place, and even there only exist once in every hundred males. 
In Norway they are very rare. I have only seen three such full heads, all 
from the Hardanger district. In Cassiar and Alaska I have only seen two 
such heads. In North Labrador and Greenland no head of this type is 
known, whilst from Southern Labrador and North Central Canada I have 
seen about twenty examples. 
pp 289 
