TJIK DEt'K. 



A 



Laplanders Travelling. 



There is no animal so useful to man in any country, as the Rein-Deer is to the Laplander. It is especi- 

 ally in winter, when any other ruminant animal would perish with cold, and for the want of proper food, 

 that the peculiar value of the Rein-Deer is felt by the Laplanders. Without hflh, communication would 

 be almost utterly suspended. Harnessed to a sledge, the Rein-Deer will draw about three hundred 

 pounds; but the Laplanders generally limit the burthen to two hundred and forty pounds. The trot of 

 the Rein-Deer is about ten miles an hour; and the animal's power of endurance is such, that journeys of 

 one hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours are not uncommon. The food of the Rein-Deer is the lichen 

 or moss, which they display wonderful quickness of smell in discovering beneath the snow. In the 

 summer they pasture upon all green herbage, and browse upon the shrubs which they find in their march. 

 They also, it is now well ascertained, eat with avidity the lemming or mountain rat, affording one of the 

 le.v instances of a ruminating animal being in the slightest degree carnivorous. • 



\ Fa] ow Deer. 



(165) 



A Ruin-Deer. 



