280 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
numerous remains were discovered, evidently swept down by the 
current from some point higher up the river. 
It will be seen from the accompanying map how generally 
distributed this animal was at one time, not only in England, but 
also in Scotland and Ireland. 
During the arctic severity of the past glacial climate the 
remains of the Red-deer were rare, while those of the Reindeer 
were most abundant. During the prehistoric period the Red-deer 
gradually increased in number, while the Reindeer as gradually 
became extinct. In its rarity in the latter epoch we have proof 
of the great climatal change that had taken place in France and 
Britain. 
The last haunt of the Reindeer in the British Islands, so far 
as can now be ascertained, appears to have been the lonely 
lichen-covered hills of Caithness, where, as we learn from an 
Icelandic Saga, it used to be hunted in the twelfth century by the 
jarls of Orkney, who were in the habit of crossing over the 
Pentland Firth for the purpose every summer.* 
Although this assertion rests only on the authority of the 
author of the ‘Saga’ referred to, there is nothing improbable in it. 
He must have been well acquainted with the animal himself. 
The hills of Caithness lie in the same parallel of latitude as the 
South of Norway and Sweden, where the animal was living at the 
time, and its food, the brushwood, and especially the Reindeer- 
moss (Cladonia rangiferina), is still found extensively over 
Scotland. 
There is another point worth notice, as remarked by Professor 
Boyd Dawkins. The Reindeer is mentioned in the ‘ Orkneyinga 
Saga’ along with the Red-deer. At the present day these animals 
occupy different zoological provinces; so that the fact of their 
association in Caithness would show that in the twelfth century 
the Red-deer had already appropriated the pastures of the Rein- 
deer, which could not retreat further on account of the sea, and 
was fast verging on extinction. From Linneus’s time down to 
the present day, even in Sweden and Norway, it has been 
retreating farther and farther north. 
* The ‘ Orkneyinga Saga’ quoted by Torfeus in his ‘ History of Orkney,’ 
and edited by Joneus in 4to, 1780. The jarls of Orkney referred to (Rogn- 
yald and Harald), according to Joneus, hunted in Caithness in 1159. 
