HIPPOPOTAMUSES, PIGS, AND DEER 35 



Black Forest in Southern Germany ; while further back still in 

 Prehistoric days it extended right across France, almost to the 

 Mediterranean and to the base of the Pyrenees. In these Pre- 

 historic days, also, it inhabited the whole of England, Scotland, 

 and Ireland. In the last-named country it is the opinion of 

 Dr. Scharff that the type of reindeer met with was that still 

 found in the Arctic regions of North America, while the reindeer 

 of England and Scotland he believes to have been identical with 

 the Scandinavian, or " Woodland," form. He supposes, there- 

 fore, that the Arctic American type of reindeer, travelling vid 

 Greenland and Iceland, over a then continuous land (or ice) 

 surface, reached the north of Scotland and so passed into Ireland ; 

 while England and Southern Scotland were peopled with reindeer 

 from France and Belgium, of the type still found in Scandinavia. 



It has been thought by some authorities that, although the 

 reindeer died out long before the Historic period in England, it 

 still persisted in the extreme north of Scotland down to the close 

 of the twelfth century ; and they support this opinion by quoting 

 the history of Torfaeus, a Dane, who in the seventeenth century 

 put together a History of Orkney from translations into the 

 Latin of the Norse sagas of Orkney. An Icelander named 

 Jonaeus again translated these sagas into Latin in 1780, and 

 commented on Torfaeus's History. According to him, the 

 correct phrase (he gives the original Norse) might be translated 

 into English: "The Jarls of Orkney were in the habit of 

 crossing over to Caithness almost every summer, and there hunt- 

 ing in the wilds the Red Deer and the Reindeer." I see no 

 reason to doubt the probability of this statement. As Professor 

 Boyd Dawkins points out, the red deer had probably advanced 

 little by little on the reindeer, taking possession of their pastures 

 (aided by the milder climate), until at last all that remained of 

 the British reindeer were crowded into the northern extremity 

 of Scotland, and so gradually became extinct before the attacks of 

 man and the rivalry of the more successful red deer. 



It is generally considered now to be probable that the reindeer 

 as a genus originated in North America, like the elk ; and that 



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