558 ABOUT THE REINDEER. 



North America. He is an irascible animal, and will fight desperately 

 in defence of the female. 



The Reindeer (Cervus Turandus) is about the size of our English 

 stag, but of a squatter and less graceful form. He stands about 

 four feet six inches high. His head is crowned with remarkably 

 long and slender horns ; and they have branched, recurved, and 

 round antlers, whose summits are palmated. His colour is brown 

 above and white beneath ; but as the animal advances in age, it 

 changes into a grayish- white, and is sometimes almost wholly white. 

 The nether part of the neck droops like a kind of hanging beard. 

 His hoofs are large, long, and black ; and so are the secondary hoofs 

 behind. The latter, while the reindeer is running, make by their 

 collision a curious clattering sound, which may be heard at a con- 

 siderable distance. 



This species formerly spread over Europe and Asia to a tolerably 

 low latitude. Csesar particularizes it among the animals of the 

 Hercynian Forest. Even at the present day troops of wild reindeer 

 traverse the wooded summits of the prolongation of the Ural Moun- 

 tains. They advance between the Don and the Volga to the 46th 

 parallel of latitude ; and they extend their wanderings even to the 

 foot of the Caucasus, on the banks of the Kouma. But their true 

 habitat is that belt of ice and snow bounded by the Arctic polar 

 circle, or, more properly, by the isothermal line of centigrade. 

 " Both the wild and the tame reindeer," says Desmoulins, " change 

 their feeding-grounds with the seasons. In winter they descend into 

 the plains and valleys ; in summer they take refuge upon the moun- 

 tains, where the wild herds gain the loftiest terraces, the more easily 

 to escape the attacks of gadflies and other insect enemies. It is 

 very remarkable that each species of animal has, so to speak, 

 his insect parasite. The cestre so terrifies the reindeer that the 

 mere appearance of one in the air will infuriate a herd of a 

 thousand animals. As it is then the moulting season, these 

 insects deposit their eggs in the skin, where the larvas lodge 



