THE WILD REINDEER OF NORWAY. 87 



in any hypothesis as to the orthographical way of 

 spelling the word, therefore, reader, free your minds 

 from any alarm on that score. 



First, let me tell you something of the history of the 

 reindeer in Norway, which, thanks to Mr. Asbjornsen 

 (with whose writings Mr. Dasent has made the reading 

 public well acquainted), I am able to do. 



Like all other ruminant animals in Europe, the 

 reindeer was formerly much more numerous than at the 

 present day. It was plentiful in Germany in the days 

 of Julius Cassar. That distinguished individual, great 

 general as he undoubtedly was, was not much of a 

 sportsman, for he seems to have had a very confused 

 idea of what the reindeer was, and to have confounded 

 it with the elk and the wild ox, all of which animals he 

 speaks of having found in the Hercynian forest. In 

 the Louvre at Paris there is a mosaic which represents 

 a reindeer feeding by the side of a river, the banks 

 of which are thickly covered with fir. It is supposed to 

 have been executed to commemorate some victory of the 

 Eomans in Germany. Cassar also mentions that the 

 Germans used reindeer skins for clothing. They must, 

 therefore, have been very abundant ; a fact which is 

 most satisfactorily confirmed by the fossil remains of 

 horns and bones which are found in the old peat-bogs 

 up to the Baltic Sea. 



From the northern parts of the continent of Ger- 



