142 RELIQUL/E AQUITANIOE. 



XII. 



REMARKS ON THE REINDEER. By ALEXANDER C. ANDERSON, Esq. 

 (In a Letter dated November 20, 1868, Rosebank, Victoria, Vancouver's Island.) 



THE following observations are connected with the Notes upon my former com- 

 munication, supra, pages 55-57. As I consider the establishment of the identity 

 of the Reindeer with the description given by Caesar to be a point of great im- 

 portance in the furtherance of your investigations, I must ask indulgence for the 

 remarks here offered, as a necessary pendant to my former letter. 



With reference to Note 7, page 55. The authority of Sallust will, I apprehend, 

 go but a small way to solve the apparent difficulty, since probably from that very 

 authority all subsequent misapprehensions on the subject have arisen. His words 

 (" Germani intectum rhenonibus corpus tegunt")* stand an isolated passage 

 among the fragments of the missing historical books. It is possible that the con- 

 text, had it been preserved, might have conveyed intimation of the true meaning 

 of the foreign word which he introduces, apparently for the first time in its adapted 

 sense, to his Roman readers ; but in the absence of such explanation it is permissible 

 to suppose that he uses the word in this concise form to avoid a long periphrasis. 

 Be this as it may, Sallust, the contemporary of Ca3sar, and writing soon after his 

 death, could have derived his information only from the words of Caesar, the sole 

 original authority. To revert, then, to the text : the passage is so clear that it 

 can, I submit, admit of no questionable reading. Amplifying it somewhat in 

 order to its due apprehension, it reads thus : " pellibus rhenonum, aut parvis 

 tegumentis de pellibus rhenonum consutis, utuntur," &c. " They wear the skins 

 of [certain animals called] Rhenones, or scanty garments [composed] of the skins 

 of those animals." When the Rheno became scarce in after times the skins of 

 other animals were necessarily employed as a substitute; and foreign writers, 

 having once adopted the term " rhenones " to signify such garments, might still 

 continue to do so notwithstanding the change of material, this the more readily, 

 since the original derivation of the word seems to have been entirely overlooked. 

 The modern languages present many instances of a similar kind. The defensive 

 armour, originally made of leather, for instance, is still called a cuirass, notwith- 



* Sallustii Historiarum Incert. Lib. Fragmenta (Editio Crispini in usum Delphini, Lond. 1793). 



