THE WILD REINDEER OF NORWAY. S7 
in any hypothesis as to the orthographical way of 
spelling the word, therefore, reader, free your minds 
from any alarm on that score. 
First, let me tell you something of the history of the 
reindeer in Norway, which, thanks to Mr. Asbjornsen 
(with whose writings Mr. Dasent has made the reading 
public well acquainted), I am able to do. 
Like all other ruminant animals in Europe, the 
reindeer was formerly much more numerous than at the 
present day. It was plentiful in Germany in the days 
of Julius Casar. That distinguished individual, great 
general as he undoubtedly was, was not much of a 
sportsman, for he seems to have had a very confused 
idea of what the reindeer was, and to have confounded 
it with the elk and the wild ox, all of which animals he 
speaks of having found in the Hercynian forest. In 
the Louvre at Paris there is a mosaic which represents 
a reindeer feeding by the side of a river, the banks 
of which are thickly covered with fir. It is supposed to 
have been executed to commemorate some victory of the 
Romans in Germany. Cesar also mentions that the 
Germans used reindeer skins for clothing. They must, 
therefore, have been very abundant; a fact which is 
most satisfactorily confirmed by the fossil remains of 
horns and bones which are found in the old peat-bogs 
up to the Baltic Sea. 
From the northern parts of the continent of Ger- 
