EEMARKS ON THE EEINDEEE AND HIPPOPOTAMUS. 153 



XIV. 



FURTHER REMARKS ON THE REINDEER; AND ON ITS ASSUMED COEXISTENCE WITH 

 THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. By A. C. ANDERSON, Esq. 



(In a Letter dated December 10, 1870, Rosebank, Victoria, Vancouver's Island,- British Columbia.) 



I HAVE perused with much interest the annotations by M. E. Lartet upon my 

 paper of November 1868 [see above, page 147], having relation to subjects treated 

 of generally in the ' Reliquiae Aquitanicce,' and more particularly in my previous 

 contribution at pages 37-57. I must crave indulgence while I venture to state 

 some of the grounds, at least, upon which are founded my dissent from the con- 

 clusions to which the arguments of M. Lartet tend premising that I do so in no 

 dogmatic spirit, but solely to elicit, as far as may be practicable, the true rela- 

 tions of a question having, a bearing of deeper significance than the mere points 

 at issue, of which the decision may appear to be in itself of comparatively trivial 

 importance. 



With reference, first, to my remark that animals so diversely constituted as the 

 Reindeer and the Hippopotamus could not have coexisted under similar circum- 

 stances, it would, I submit, be illogical to assume that the existing races of 

 animals, whether under supposed processes of acclimatization or otherwise, have 

 changed in any degree their relative conditions. All written evidence goes to 

 show that, where unchanged by the effects of domestication, the different genera 

 retain now their pristine characteristics. The habits of divers known Birds and 

 other animals, as described in the writings of antiquity, and especially in one of 

 the oldest known records, the " Book of Job," are unaltered. Among the Insect 

 tribes the like identity is observable. The flight of the Locust, the habits of the 

 Ant as described by Virgil*, remain accurately as they were. The Asihis of the 

 " Georgics " has its representative in the modern Gad-fly ; and the " fly from the 

 remotest parts of the rivers of Egypt " of Sacred Writ is still exemplified in the 

 Zim of Bruce, the dreaded Tzetze of Livingston. Hence we may reason that the 

 same sequence of constitution and habit had continued through ages anterior to 

 historic record consequently that the distinctive characteristics of the two races 



* Ma. iv. 402 &c. Georg. iii. 147. Isa. vii. 18. The Asilus of the Romans appears to have been 

 synonymous with the Grecian (Estrus. 



