30 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



The passage of the sun across the equator sets a great part 

 of this animal world in motion. The reindeer, on which the 

 very existence of man depends in these inhospitable regions 

 of the north, leaves the forest belt at about the end of May 

 and travels northward over the tundra in search of fresh vegeta- 

 tion. It marches in herds numbering many thousands of 

 individuals, reaches the margin of the Arctic Ocean just before 

 the winter ice breaks up, and finds a passage over this to the 

 islands lying off the coast, which furnish its most northerly 

 feeding-grounds. There, isolated from the continent after the 

 disappearance of the ice by the open sea, it enjoys the short 

 Arctic summer, and fares well, growing sleek and fat, till on 

 the approach of winter it turns south again, crosses the sea 

 as soon as the surface is covered with fresh ice, and regains 

 its home in the woods. In these annual oscillatory migrations 

 it is exposed to continual danger : wolves are never very far 

 off; from the woods through the tundra the Indian follows the 

 herds as far as the limits set by the Eskimo occupation, or if 

 farther at his own peril ; beyond this limit the hunt is continued 

 by the Eskimo himself. There is no close time for the reindeer, 

 but it is more particularly during the return journey, when the 

 animal is in good condition, and accompanied by its newly- 

 foaled young, that its flesh is sought. In the case of the rein- 

 deer both Eskimo and Indian pursue the same methods of 

 capture : it is waylaid at spots where its trail crosses a river, 

 or it is driven by noise and alarms in the direction of con- 

 vergent stone fences, which extend for great distances, and 

 lead to a lake or watercourse, where the hunter waits concealed 

 in his birch-bark canoe or his kayak, ready to dispatch victim 

 after victim with his spear. By this latter method, when the 

 plot is well arranged and the herd not too large, not a single 

 animal will escape. The reindeer flesh is the favourite meat 

 of Indian and Eskimo alike : every part of the animal is eaten, 

 even the contents of the stomach ; the blood is boiled, and makes 

 a rich brown soup, greatly esteemed as a dainty ; sometimes the 

 half-digested vegetable food from the stomach is mixed with the 

 blood before boiling — a welcome addition in a region where 

 plants edible by man are scarce or altogether absent. The 

 marrow is extracted from the bones, which are then pounded 

 small and the fat boiled out. 



The autumn hunting affords a rich store of reindeer meat, 



