THE AMERICAN REINDEER. 121 



Atlantic, which presents the only serious interruption 

 to its circumpolar continuity, it occurs in Iceland, Green- 

 land and Newfoundland. Sometimes preferring the 

 barren heights of the Norwegian fjells, or the elevated 

 plateaux of Newfoundland, at others the seclusion of the 

 pine forest (as with the woodland cariboo of America), 

 its haunts and boundaries are always 'determined by the 

 distribution of those mosses and lichens which almost 

 exclusively constitute its food — the Cladonia rangiferina 

 or reindeer lichen, with two or three species of Cornicu- 

 laria and Cetraria. 



When we consider the great antiquity of the reindeer, 

 and its occurrence as a true fossil mammal coeval with 

 ti^e mammoth and other gigantic animals now extinct, 

 in connection with its singular adaptation to feed on 

 lichens — those representatives of a primitive vegetation 

 which are still engaged in preparing a soil for higher 

 forms in northern latitudes — we cannot fail in recog- 

 nising its mission as an animal of the utmost import- 

 ance in affording food and clothing to the primitive 

 races of mankind of the stone age. With its remains 

 discovered in the bone caves and drift beds of that 

 period are associated stone arrow-heads and bone imple- 

 ments ; whilst a resemblance of the animal, fairly wrought 

 upon its own horn, leaves no room to doubt its uses as a 

 beast of the chase, though probably not (in those savage 

 times) of domestication. 



Even in Caesar's day ancient Gaul was a country of 

 gloomy fir forests and extensive morasses, and its climate 

 more like that of Canada at present. The reindeer also 

 was still abundant throughout central Europe (though 

 probably it had long since disappeared from Great 



