THE ANCIENT GEEMANI. 46 



Elk in terms the most unreal and extravagant. Besides, Caesar talks of the skins 

 of the Hheno thus: "et pellibus, aut parvis rhenonum tegumentis, utuntur" &c. 7 

 I am aware that some diversity of interpretation has existed in regard to this 

 passage ; but it seems to be clearly thus : " they use the skins of Reindeer 

 (rhenones) to cover themselves, or small vestments made of the same material." 

 The name, too, given by Caesar, a Latinization of the Saxon " Ran," is another 

 proof. Hence the modern Prench Henne, and our own Reindeer. I might mul- 

 tiply illustrations, but will confine myself to saying that the term " Rhenones " 

 (which other authors, while dubious of its true signification, explain as being a 

 word of German origin) appears to have been applied by Caesar to the skins used 

 for the garments in question, and to the animals which yielded them, but that 

 afterwards, when describing the same animal, albeit inaccurately, he does not 

 appear to have identified it with the animal of which he had previously spoken 

 and had actually named 8 . The recent discoveries not only corroborate the fact 

 that the Reindeer (or Rheno) existed in localities where they are now extinct, 

 but prove that they at one time existed in a region far to the south of the 

 locality where Caesar describes them as existing in his time in the interior of 

 Gaul namely, and up to the slopes of the Pyrenees 9 . 



I have been insensibly led to dwell on particulars which will doubtless not have 

 escaped the notice of yourself and your learned coadjutors ; a feeling of curiosity, 

 however, has prompted me to consider the subject more fully than when I sat 

 down (yesterday) to reply to your letter ; and it has struck me that some facts 

 that have come under my own observation during a long residence in the North- 

 west of America, in regard to the migration and disappearance of races of the 

 larger animals from localities where they were once numerous, and the consequent 

 changes of place of tribes, or portions of tribes, to which they yielded a subsistence, 

 may tend to aid a solution of the Aquitanian problem. I may be pardoned, then, 

 if I dwell for awhile on the subject before concluding. And I will set out by at 

 once broadly stating my impression that the Cave-race who once inhabited the 

 southern region were similar in habits, and indeed identical with a portion of the 

 Germans as described by Tacitus, that, inhabiting Aquitania, and subsisting 

 chiefly with the products of the chase, they dwelt in caves either naturally formed 

 or artificially hollowed even as the Germans of a later day, as described by 

 Tacitus, who says, " Solent et subterraneos specus aperire, eosque multo insuper 

 fimo onerant, suffugium hiemi, et receptaculum frugibus," &c. (Germ, xvi.), that 

 at the period (a vague one) in question the lowland forests of Gaul as of Germany 



