16 
ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 
from a nursing bottle, but it steadfastly refused 
and insufficient food could be poured down its 
gullet by foi’ce to keep it alive. On the 27th 
it had fallen to a weight of 11 pounds and on 
the 28th it weighed only 10% pounds. On the 
29th at 5 :00 P. M. it breathed its last having 
lived 16% days. Its death was no doubt due 
directly to an insufficiency of food. 
The mother appeared to be in no way con¬ 
cerned over the loss of her whelp and is now 
with her companion and as active and enter¬ 
taining to the visitors as ever. 
DOMESTICATED REINDEER 
Part of the Lomen herd of 35,000 animals. 
THE DOMESTICATED REINDEER IN ALASKA* 
By C. H. Townsend 
T HE introduction of the Siberian domesti¬ 
cated reindeer among the Eskimo of North¬ 
western Alaska was begun twenty-nine 
years ago as a missionary and educational en¬ 
terprise, with a view to making the people 
self-supporting in a region where the native 
wild caribou were rapidly disappearing. 
To-day there are more than two hundred thou¬ 
sand of the animals in our great northern ter¬ 
ritory, about seventy per cent, of which are 
owned by native Eskimo. 
White stockmen have during recent years 
engaged in raising reindeer; have built cold 
storage stations; have already made important 
* The writer is indebted to Mr. Carl J. Lomen 
of Nome, Alaska, engaged in raising and shipping 
reindeer, for the use of the photographs here repro¬ 
duced. Dr. William Hamilton, of the Alaska Di¬ 
vision of the Bureau of Education, and Mr. Lomen 
have both supplied recent information on the rein¬ 
deer industry. An earlier account of the introduc¬ 
tion of the reindeer by the present writer was pub¬ 
lished in this Bulletin in November, 1913. 
shipments of refrigerated reindeer meat to 
Seattle and other cities, and the business is 
developing in a promising manner. 
The industry is based on a northern animal 
capable of foraging for itself in Arctic winter 
weather, and is located in a region where suit¬ 
able grazing range is practically unlimited. 
As the reindeer herds, when properly controlled, 
double in size every three years, it is believed 
that within another decade there will be in 
Alaska fully a million reindeer, a number 
almost double the combined herds in Northern 
Norway, Sweden and Finland. 
Alaska has an unforested grazing area suit¬ 
able for reindeer, of many millions of acres, 
sufficient for the support of four or five mil¬ 
lions of reindeer. There are now over one 
hundred different herds in the hands of natives, 
distributed over western Alaska from the Arc¬ 
tic shore southward to the Alaska Peninsula. 
It is desirable that the reindeer be intro¬ 
duced into other sections, and it has been sug- 
