46 C 2 THE REIN-DEER. 



offal -, but those of the larger, from two hundred to two hundred 

 and forty. The variations in colour are much less extensive. 

 The general colour of the upper parts of the body, in summer, 

 is of a dark brown ; but as the winter approaches the brown 

 assumes a grayish tinge ; the whole of the under parts retaining 

 a greyish white hue all the year. Occasionally the coat is 

 entirely white ; and spotted or mottled rein-deer are not 

 uncommon in some parts of Siberia and Lapland. The hairs 

 of the coat are so thick, that it is hardly possible by separating 

 them in any way to see the least portion of the hide. This 

 species of deer is the only one of which the female is provided 

 with antlers similar to those of the male, but rarely attaining 

 an equal magnitude. The antlers vary so much in size, pro- 

 portional thickness, and extent of curvature, that no two indi- 

 viduals, even of the same age and sex, have them shaped exactly 

 alike. The power which the hoofs possess of separating from 

 each other, adds greatly to the security of the animal's footing 

 by enabling it to tread on a larger surface. 



Trains, sometimes consisting of as many as two hundred 

 sledges, are continually traversing Lapland, even crossing the 

 mountains, to convey merchandise from the coast to the interior 

 during the long and dreary winter, and which could not be 

 conveyed at other seasons, as rein-deer are of little use for 

 carrying burdens on their backs. But with the facilities afforded 

 by a frozen surface, the rein-deer can draw, each, a sledge con- 

 taining two or three hundred pounds weight. They generally 

 proceed at the rate of about ten miles an hour ; and their power 

 of endurance is such, that it is not unusual for them to perform 

 a journey of one hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours. In 

 the palace of Drontingholm (Sweden), there is a portrait of a 

 rein-deer which, on an occasion of great emergency, in 1699, 

 conveyed an officer with important dispatches to the distance 

 of eight hundred English miles in the almost incredibly short 

 period of forty-eight hours, but it dropped down lifeless when it 

 reached its journey's end. Mr. Dillon says, that " the rein-deer, 

 so far from galloping with his head up, as he is usually repre- 



