DEVOURED BY REIN-DEER. 73 



great a distance, as not to find its way back again." Regnard 

 tells us likewise, that " the rein-deer eat all the lemmings 

 they meet with." And Pennant, that " the Samoides 

 assert that the rein- deer will greedily devour those animals. 

 Perhaps," he adds, " they take them medicinally, as sheep 

 are known greedily to seek and swallow spiders." 



Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke, in the first volume of his 

 very interesting work on Lapland, also assures us that the 

 rein-deer devours the lemming. "The story," he says, 

 "will doubtless appear absurd and incredible to some, in 

 which light it struck me when first told of it. From 

 the repeated questions, however, I put to every mountain 

 Laplander when I was in Norwegian Lapland ; and from 

 the answers I uniformly received, confirming the truth 

 of what I had heard from persons who had all repeatedly 

 been witness to it ; I was at last induced to give credit 

 to the assertion, particularly when I afterwards saw the 

 rein-deer pursuing the lemming, and striking it with its 

 fore-feet. 



" Several of the Finnish merchants at Hammerfest, who 

 themselves kept rein-deer, assured me, they had frequently 

 been eye-witnesses of their eating the lemming. Since my 

 return, I have questioned Jens Holm the Laplander, who is 

 now in England, concerning it, and have learnt from him 

 the following circumstance : One day having met with the 

 lemmings, and killed a considerable number, he laid them up 

 in a heap ; and when the rein-deer came home in the even- 

 ing, they quickly found them out, and devoured the whole 

 of them. He, as well as his wife, knew the lemmings 

 by their skins, which . I showed them, and which I offered 

 to the deer, one of which, in particular, took them into 



