Queen Charlotte Island Caribou. 
Pentictou, B. C., April I.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: 1 spent last summer near Masset, 
Graham Island, Queen Charlotte group, and 
since my return my friend, Allan Brooks, has 
asked me to write to you on the subject of 
Rangifer dawsoni. 
From actual experience I can give you no in¬ 
formation about the animal, but from what I 
was able to find out from Indians, inhabitants 
and prospectors there can be no doubt that the 
animal is not numerous and that the existing 
specimens are who.ly confined to the northwest 
corner of Graham Island. 
The distinctive characteristics of this species 
of caribou have been set forth by competent, in¬ 
terested naturalists, but no one, I fancy has ar¬ 
rived at the reason for the existence of a few 
degenerate caribou in the corner of an island 
200 miles long and anything from twenty to 
seventy miles wide, all of which area is well 
suited to caribou; in fact, exceptionally well 
suited for any species of deer. 
It has been suggested that these few animals 
are the remains of a herd which happened to 
be on Graham Island before it became an island 
by the forming of Hecate Strait in the far off 
ages. 
There appear to me to be conclusive objec¬ 
tions to that theory. 
To begin with, in that case there would be 
scattered degenerate caribou in all the suitable 
parts of the Queen Charlotte group, but we 
may fairly ask why degenerate? In-breeding 
would have to be very exceedingly close in 
wild animals to produce degeneracy, and I be¬ 
lieve, as a matter of fact, does not occur, nature 
providing against it. 
Even if it were only one small herd isolated 
there, in a country of that size and suitability 
their descendants would never have degenerated, 
but in time would undoubtedly have spread over 
the whole country. 
One might as well expect the wapiti and black- 
tail deer of Vancouver Island to be degenerate. 
The black bear of Queen Charlotte Island is 
not degenerate, very much the reverse; neither 
do any other mammals of the islands show any 
signs of weakness, though from their long isola¬ 
tion they show, I believe, certain modifications 
in structure. 
If these caribou were a subspecies of their 
own genus as are the black bear, they would, 
like the black bear, be all over the islands. 
Hecate Strait is over twenty miles wide at its 
narrowest place, and being the roughest piece of 
water on the Pacific coast, no land animal of 
any species ever swam it. These caribou were, 
therefore, undoubtedly introduced. 
The Haida Indians of Graham Island are quite 
the most virile race on the north Pacific coast, 
and have always been constant, though at one 
time unwelcome, visitors to the mainland. 
I have no doubt that during some expedition 
to the mainland some Indian, perhaps 200, per¬ 
haps 300 years ago traded for or took a pair 
of caribou calves from a mainland Indian and 
brought them over to his home on Naden Har¬ 
bor, probably presenting them as pets to his 
children. 
These calves—no doubt the offspring of one 
cow killed just after calving—wandered off from 
Naden Harbor into the suitable caribou country 
which begins within a mile of the beach, and 
being male and female, and finding neither 
wolves, coyotes nor cougar on the island, were 
able to breed unmolested, but it would certainly 
occur that before they became a band large 
enough to scatter in the least, they became so 
in-bred that they lost many of their caribou 
characteristics, including their size, and no doubt 
had there been vermin on the island, would not 
have survived. C. de B. Green. 
Mr. Allen Brooks, of British Columbia, to 
whom we owe the first news and photograph of 
the only ones of these caribou ever secured by 
naturalists, writes us of them as follows: 
I examined a specimen of this animal ( Rangi¬ 
fer dawsoni (Seton)) in Victoria two months 
ago—January, 1911—and was at once impressed 
by the extraordinary slender formation of the 
head and limbs as well the small size of the 
animal. The animal—a bull of two or three 
years—was no larger than an ordinary sized 
mule deer and of a peculiar pale yellowish brown 
color, or rather a grayish brown tinged with 
yellow. The neck was whitish, which color ran 
up toward the face, which was brownish, not 
dark black or brown as in most caribou. It 
had a white nose and white around eyes, white 
around the feet and up posterior aspect of all 
the legs. The whole belly was white and there 
was a light—but not abruptly paler—area on the 
buttocks; no dark brown or black anywhere. 
Late Spring Storms. 
Saginaw, Mich., April 5.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: A Saginaw paper says that a white 
robin had made its appearance here and was 
to be seen on South Jefferson avenue. Presum¬ 
ably this is the white robin that is looked for 
each spring by the employes at the postofifice, 
and which has made an annual appearance in 
Federal Park for some years. 
For a number of years the arrival of the white 
robin in the postofifice grounds has been noted. 
This probably is the same bird. I am wonder¬ 
ing what became of him. The weather was warm 
and spring-like until a few days ago when we 
had a blizzard and it has been at the freez¬ 
ing point ever since. There are lots of robins, 
killdeer, meadow larks, horned larks, and I have 
been told that the bluebirds are here. I wonder 
if they go back south or if they simply starve 
to death? 
I once was on the North Branch of the Au 
Sable River about the 1st of May. For several 
days the banks of the stream had been literally 
alive with warblers, waders, purple grackles and 
thrushes. The woodthrush predominated; there 
were hundreds of them-. Then came on one of 
those sudden changes that Northern Michigan is 
noted for. Eight inches of snow fell. The first 
day it was not cold and wherever the snow 
melted the birds congregated. The next day it 
turned cold and there was a regular old bliz¬ 
zard. I know we stopped three times to warm 
ourselves by fires that we started, and in some 
places the birds would come and sit in the bushes 
near by as if they, too, were warming by the 
fire. In waiting for the team to take me home to¬ 
ward evening I went into a deserted log camp 
and a number of birds were in there sheltered 
from the storm and some of them so numb that 
I could pick them up. A storm of this kind 
meant death to thousands of our songsters. 
W. B. Mershon. 
Mammals of West Virginia. 
In the report of the West Virginia State 
Board of Agriculture for the quarter ending 
Dec. 30, 1910, is found a paper of much interest 
on the mammals of West Virginia. It is pre¬ 
pared by Fred. E. Brooks, of the Agricultural 
Experiment Station at Morgantown, \V. V a., and 
covers all the known native species. Except for 
a briefly annotated list of Thaddeus Surber, of 
White Sulphur Springs, no systematic effort so 
far as known has before been made to record 
the names, distribution and habits of the animals 
of the State. 
Deer still occur in some numbers, and Mr. 
Brooks quotes Emerson Carney as writing in 
Forest and Stream that as late as 1900 one 
hunter killed thirty-five deer and three bears 
in the mountains of Pocahontas county. 
The elk has long been extinct. Records are 
given of animals killed in 1830, 1835, 1840 and 
1843, which last is the final record so far as 
known. It will be recalled that the last elk in 
Pennsylvania was killed in 1867. 
The buffalo probably once roamed in consider¬ 
able numbers over the greater part of the State. 
Hale, in “Trans-Allegheny Pioneers,” p. 62, says 
that the last buffalo killed between the Kanawha 
and Ohio rivers was taken in 1815, but Maxwell 
speaks of a cow and calf killed in 1825. 
Beaver, which were once common, are prob¬ 
ably long since extinct, though there is a well 
authenticated case of a beaver killed in Poca¬ 
hontas county in 1907, but this was perhaps an 
escaped captive. 
The panther, which is generally supposed to 
be extinct, Mr. Brooks thinks still exists, though 
he has not succeeded in obtaining convincing 
proof of this. 
The spotted skunk, sometimes known as civet 
cat, occurs rarely in the southern and south¬ 
eastern sections of the State. 
Black bears are still quite common, and it is 
reported that twenty-five sheep belonging to one 
man were killed by bears in the Canaan Valley 
in the year 1908. 
Mr. Brooks’ list is very interesting and reflects 
credit on him. Evidently, however, he did not 
have an opportunity to revise his proofs. We 
have mentioned only a few of the rarer or ex¬ 
tinct species which it names. 
