324 



CASSELL'S POPULAR NATURAL HISTORY. 



animals draw sledges, even across the snows, in which the breadth of their hoofs prevents their 

 sinking. With two of them yoked in a sledge, the Laplander, it is said, will travel upwards of a 

 hundred English miles a-day. 



At the palace of Drotningholm, in Sweden, there is a portrait of a rein-deer, which is repre- 

 sented, on an occasion of emergency, to have drawn an officer with important dispatches the incredible 

 distance of eight hundred English miles in forty-eight hours. The event is stated to have happened 

 in 1699, and tradition adds that the deer dropped down lifeless on its arrival. 



M. Pictet, a French astronomer, made some experiments, in the year 1709, in order to ascertain 

 the speed of the rein-deer, when exerted to the full, for a short distance. Of three deer yoked to light 

 sledges, the first performed three thousand and eighty-nine feet eight inches in two minutes that is 

 at the rate of nearly nineteen miles an hour ; the second did the same distance in three minutes, and 

 the third in three minutes twenty-six seconds. 



The rein-deer feeds on two kinds of lichen,* the buds of coniferous evergreens, and other Arctic 







f-r 



YOL'XG STAG OF CHILI. 



plants. During the summer, it migrates to the woods and mountains, to avoid the persecution ot 

 various insects, which are a pest to it, especially the CEstrus Tarandi the very hum of which will 

 put a whole herd of deer to flight. This insect penetrates the skin of the deer, and" deposits its e^s 

 under it : this produces. a painful inflammation, the larvse feeding on the juices which are secreted, 

 until they assume the winged state. 



In summer, the coat of the rein-deer assumes a deeper hue than in winter ; and the younc animal 



has a still darker tinge than the $dult. The general colour of the upper part is of a dark brown all 



the hairs being more or less deeply tipped with that colour, and of a grayish white at the base. As 

 the winter approaches, the brown assumes a grayish tinge the whole of the under parts retainino 1 the 

 same shade of grayish white throughout the year. The feet are almost always marked immediately 

 above the hoofs with a band of white. Occasionally, the entire coat puts on this white appearance 

 in id spotted or mottled deer are said to be by no means uncommon in some parts of Lapland, but are 

 still more frequent in Siberia. The fur of the latter is of a finer quality than that of the other 

 varieties. 



N 



* Lichen rangerifinus. L. Islandiciis, 



