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Show i9oo] ANIMAL LIFE 61 allowed the moose to become much more numerous. NThe caribou ( rangifer), of which there are some seven fairly distinct varieties, falls within two main groups: the woodland caribou, which inhabits the wooded portion of British America extending into Maine and Montana; and the barren- ground caribou, which traverses the vast treeless tundras of arctic America and Greenland. \ The caribou is migratory and travels in immense herds, and being easy to kill it is slaughtered in great ntambers by Eskimos and Indians. In some parts of Alaska it has been almost exterminated by natives, who have butchered them to sell the flesh to the whalers wintering on the coast. The final extinction of the caribou, however, is fortunately far distant. Of all our ruminants, the one distinctive American, the one form which has no Old- World double, isv the prong- horn antelope which^ Zoologically, i » intermediate between the deer and the bovidae, of cattle. v Formerly very abundant between the Missouri River and the Pacific coast, it now exists only on the great plains and the high plateaus, where its numbers are decreasing. xOf less actual value to civilized man than the above- mentioned species, but formerly very important to the Indians, are the mountain- sheep, or big- horn, and the Rocky Mountain goat. The former, once very abundant, is now limited to small bands, and is doomed to early extinction. The Rocky |
