FUR-FARMING IN CANADA 133 
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some phases of the work, and in some respects excel the Lapps; they 
can lasso better than the Lapps, and many become expert in making 
harness and sleds. The minding of the herd requires constant vigi- 
lance, especially in the spring during the fawning season. Then the 
herders have to keep watch day and night by turns with rifle to pro- 
tect the herd from the ravages of the Arctic wolf and the dogs. 
In the ear of each Government deer a little aluminum button is 
fastened securely, and all private owners and herders have a mark 
which must be registered with a local Superintendent of the Reindeer 
Station and also at Washington. Besides being taught the art of deer- 
manship the apprentices are instructed in keeping accounts, the methods 
of marketing reindeer, and in other practical matters connected with 
the industry. No apprentice can become a herder unless he is proficient 
in the branches of elementary reading, arithmetic, and writing. At the 
end of his apprenticeship the young Eskimo native is allotted a number 
of deer by the Government, and with the increase obtained during the 
intei val of his five years’ service, each apprentice will have onan aver- 
age, a herd of fifty 1eindeer. As this herd will double itself every three 
years, the graduate apprentice will have a herd which will afford and 
assuie a self-supporting income quite enough to satisfy the economic 
wants of himself and family in the future. He is thus established in 
business by the Government and is given fiee pasturage thereafter. The 
reindeer produces one fawn in the spring each yea: for ten years. 
Among the useful and profitable products of the reindeer are the 
skins for clothing. Of these pelts most varied use is made. From them 
are fashioned the tight-fitting trousers and that wonderful outer gar- 
ment, the ‘pai ka’, universally worn in winter by both male and female 
natives and by many whites. The ‘parka’ extends to the knees and has 
a close-fitting hood, which keeps the head and shoulders comfortably 
warm even in the severest weather. These reindeer gaiments are 1e- 
markable for their excellent qualities of resisting moisture and cold. A 
close examination of the hair of reindeer furnishes an explanation of its 
peculiar value. The hair is not merely a hollow tubular structwe, with 
a cavity extending throughout its entire length, but is divided, or par- 
titioned off, into exceedingly numerous cells, like watertight compart- 
ments. These are filled with air, and their walls are so elastic and at 
the same time of such strong resistance that they are not broken up 
either during the process of manufacture or by swelling when wet. The 
cells expand in water, and thus it happens that a person clad com- 
pletely in garments made of reindeer wool does not sink when in water, 
because he is buoyed up by the air contained in the hundreds of 
thousands of hair cells. 
