242 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
his skill. In many cases, it is true, so vast has been 
the change produced in their characters, both physical 
and moral, by the cultivation to which they have been 
subjected, and so innumerable are the varieties to which 
this cultivation has given rise, that it has at length 
become almost impossible to refer the domestic races 
to their prototypes in nature. In others, however, and 
more especially in those animals which have been uni- 
formly subjected to the same mode of treatment, and 
confined in a great degree to the countries in which 
they were originally placed, the change produced by 
domestication upon their outward appearance has been 
so trifling, as to render it impossible to call in question 
their identity with the wild stock from whence they 
sprung. 
Such is the domesticated Rein-deer of the Laplander 
compared with the free herds that are spread so abun- 
dantly through all the habitable parts of the Arctic 
Regions and the neighbouring countries, extending in 
the New Continent to a much lower latitude than in the 
Old, and passing still farther south on all the principal 
mountain chains. In America the southern limit of the 
Rein-deer across nearly the whole continent appears 
to be about the parallel of Quebec, but the animal is 
most numerous between 63° and 66°. Passing west- 
wards it is said to be unknown in the islands interposed 
between America and Asia, but is again abundant in 
Kamtschatka, throughout nearly the whole of Siberia, 
in Northern Russia, Sweden, and Norway, and more 
especially in Finmark and Lapland. In these latter 
countries the numbers of the few wild herds that still 
exist are suffering a constant diminution, every art 
being put in practice by the hardy natives to reclaim 
and domesticate an animal which constitutes their sole 
property, the source of all their comforts, and the very 
