56 EELIQULE AQUITANICLE. 



appear to be possessed of one horn only ; and therefore he might legitimately describe it, in 

 times when a belief in all kinds of monsters was current, as possessed of one horn. To this 

 imperfection of drawing many of the monsters in the natural-history books of the Middle Ages 

 may most probably be traced. It is not at all reasonable to suppose that Csesar himself ever 

 saw a Reindeer; for he describes the Hercynian Forest as stretching far beyond his ken; then 

 he proceeds to enumerate the animals that are found in it. The Germans, however, in his 

 time were well acquainted with the Reindeer; for in the 21st chap, of the 6th Book of his 

 ' Commmentaries ' he writes that they use small skins of Reindeer, ' parvis rhenonum tegumentis 

 utuntur/ a passage in which ' rhenones ' is the Latinized form of the word that is now current 

 as 'Rennthier' (Swedish 'Rendjur'), and which is preserved in the Romance word 'Renne/ 

 the root-meaning being found in the German ' rennen ' to run*. When the Teutonic invaders 

 of Europe advanced northwards and westwards in the Hercynian Forest, they met with an 

 animal altogether strange to their eyes ; they were struck with its running-powers, and so they 

 termed it the running beast, and thus the animal acquired a name. Other writers of antiquity, 

 such as Pliny, Solinus, and ^Elian speak of an animal which they term ' Tarandus ' ; their 

 accounts, however, are purely mythical, and it may have been an Elk, or, as Gesner believes, a 

 Polish 'Thur/ as reasonably as any other animalf. In Caesar's description the uprightness 

 of the horns shows that he meant the true Reindeer and not the Elk." " On the Former 

 Range of the Reindeer in Europe," in ' The Popular Science Review/ No. 26, January 1868, 

 pp. 40, 41. 



9 The Reindeer must have retired from Western Europe by gradual stages. It has been 

 noted as fossil in the peat-bogs of Pomerania, which are regarded as of a more recent age 

 than the deposits of our caverns, where this animal has left such abundant remains; and, 

 adopting the calculations cited by M. Grewingk ('Ueber die friihere Existenz von Rennthieren 

 in den Ostseeprovinzen/ &c. 1867), the Reindeer perhaps existed in Livonia 600 or 1200 

 years ago. E.L. 



10 After the very many observations which we have been able to make, in the caverns and 

 rock-shelters of Perigord, on the remains of Reindeer, slain in all seasons and at every age 

 (judging by the state of their antlers still attached to the frontal bones), we must conclude 

 that this animal had a permanent habitat in that region. At the time of the Glacial Epoch, 

 as well as before and after, in the mean latitude of Europe of the Quaternary Period, the more 

 humid climate may have had less extreme seasons, the summers being cooler than at present, 

 not driving the Reindeer to take refuge in the mountains, and, on the other hand, milder 

 winters, allowing the Hippopotamus to live in the rivers, which, fed by abundant rains, have 

 left in wide-spread alluvia the witnesses of their enormous power. E. L. 



11 Formerly ranging through nearly the whole of North America, east of the Rocky Mountains, 

 the Bison is now confined to the plains west of the Missouri and along the slopes of the Rocky 



* " That this is the true derivation is proved by the prominence which Olaus Magnus, Albertus Magnus, 

 and Gesner give to its attribute of swiftness. Dr. Lee derives the name from the German 'rein' (clean), 

 without, however, giving any reason." 



t "Historia naturalis; folio, 1603, vol. i. p. 140." 



