EXCELLENCE OP HIS TLESH. 243 



"brisket. We had no meaus of weigliing tliese 

 deer, but I consider that the best stags must 

 have exceeded three hundred pounds in clean 

 weight. I think the flesh of the rein-deer is 

 the richest and most delicious meat, wild or 

 tame, which I ever tasted, with the excep- 

 tion of a fat Eland, and a diminutive West 

 Indian animal called by the negroes the Lapp * 

 {Ccelogenys or Cavia JPaca). Unlike the flesh 

 of most wild animals, the venison of the rein- 

 deer is not improved by keeping, and I think 

 it is never better than the same day, or even 

 the same hour, that the animal is killed. 

 When it is kept long the fat gets dark co- 

 loured, and acquires a rank and unpleasant 

 taste and odour. 



In the summer months they do not live in 

 large herds together. An extensive valley 

 may, perhaps, contain forty or fifty deer, but 

 they are all in small independent companies of 

 two, four, or six ; and I have seldom, if ever, 

 seen more than eight in one herd. In the 

 winter season, however, when they come down 

 to the islands and the wide flats on the sea- 



* After a somewhat extensive experieuce in that line, I 

 am inclined to award to the Lapp the palm of being the 

 best culinary animal in the world. 



B 2 



