CLASS T . MAMMALIA: ORDER 9. RUMINANTIA. 559 



in most countries, give even the poor Laplander an export trade, and make him a citizen of the 

 world. As a beast of burden or draught the importance of the Reindeer is equally great. The 

 weight which it can draw over the snow, when harnessed to a sledge, is said to be three hundred 

 pounds, but two hundred and forty pounds form the general limit. The tales told of its swiftness, 

 when thus employed, would appear almost incredible if not well attested. In a race of three 

 deer with light sledges started by Pictet, who went to the north of Lapland in 17G9 to observe 

 the transit of Venus, the first performed 3089 feet in two minutes, making a rate of nearly nine- 

 teen English miles an hour ; the second went over the same ground in three minutes, and the 

 last in three minutes twenty-six seconds. One is recorded to have drawn an officer with impor- 

 tant dispatches, in 1699, eight hundred English miles in forty-eight hours, and the portrait of the 

 poor deer, which fell dead at the end of its wonderful journey, is still preserved in the palace of 

 Drotningholm in Sweden. Journeys of one hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours are said 

 not to be uncommon. 



In America the Reindeer is called Caribou, and is usually described as consisting of two varieties. 

 These chiefly inhabit the high northern territories called Fur Countries: one is named the Wood- 

 land Caribou, and is confined to the wooded and more southern districts ; the other, called the 

 Barren Ground Caribou, passes the summer along the shores of the Arctic Seas or the Barren 

 Grounds of the north, and retires to the woods only in winter. The former is the larger animal, 

 being about the size of the Lapland breed, and weighing two hundred to two hundred and forty 

 pounds, while the latter weighs about one hundred to one hundred and thirty pounds. The dif- 

 ference of size seems to constitute the chief difference between the two varieties ; both are of a 

 deep brown color in summer, and a grayish-white in winter. Both migrate in herds of from 

 twenty to two hundred, and both are hunted by the Indians and Esquimaux, who value their 

 hides, and who esteem their tongues a great luxury. The flesh" is also an important article of 

 food, and is made into pemmican by being pounded and then mixed with one-third of melted fat 

 poured over it; it will keep a great length of time, and is much used by hunters and travelers. 

 Other varieties are spoken of, as the Rocky Mountain Caribou and the Newfoundland Cari- 

 bou, but there is probably no foundation for such distinctions. It is, indeed, doubted by some 

 naturalists whether there are any such permanent varieties as we have described under the names 

 of Woodland and Barren Ground Caribou. One or both of these are widely spread, extending 

 from Canada north to the Arctic seas and west to the Pacific. Baird inclines to regard the latter 

 as a distinct species. 



Genus ELK or MOOSE : Alces. — Of this there is a single species, called Elk in Europe, and 

 Moose or Moose-Deer in the United States. It is the A. malchis of naturalists ; Cervus Alces 

 of Linna?us ; the Eland and Orignal of Buffon ; the Elch of the Germans, and Loss of the Rus- 

 sians. It was formerly common in all the north of Europe and Asia, but is now rarely met with, 

 and only in the extreme northern regions. AVhen the United States were first settled by the 

 whites, it extended from the Carolinas to the polar regions ; its southern limit now is the north- 

 ern borders of Maine and New York. Thence northward to the arctic seas it is found more or 

 less abundantly. 



This animal is the largest of the deer kind, being taller than the horse. Its horns weigh fifty 

 or sixty pounds, and the whole carcass seven hundred to twelve hundred pounds. The head, 

 measuring above two feet in length, is narrow and clumsily shaped by the swelling upon the upper 

 part of the nose and nostrils; the eye is proportionally small and sunk; the ears long, hairy, and 

 asinine; the neck and withers are surmounted by a heavy mane, and the throat furnished with 

 long coarse hair, and in younger specimens encumbered with a pendulous gland ; these give 

 altogether an uncouth character to this part of the. animal. Its body, however, is round, compact, 

 and short ; th« tail not more than four inches long, and the legs, though very long, are remark- 



4 ably clean and firm; this length of limbs and the overhanging lips have caused the ancients to 

 fancy that it grazed walking backward. The hair of the animal, which is of a grayish -brown, is 

 coarse and angular, breaking if bent. Its movements are rather heavy, and the shoulders being 

 higher than the croup it does not gallop, but shuffles or ambles along, its joints cracking at every 



; step with a sound heard to some distance. Increasing its speed, the hind-feet straddle to avoid 



