THE REINDEER. 545 



THE REINDEER. 



The Reindeer, Tarandus rangifer (Plate XL), is a native of the 

 icy deserts of the Arctic regions. It is found in Spitzbergen, Greenland, 

 Lapland, Finland, and the whole of Northern Russia, as well as in Sibe- 

 ria and Tartary. In Russia it sometimes migrates southward as far as 

 the range of the Caucasus. 



The ancients were well acquainted with the Reindeer. Caesar 

 describes it, Pliny confounds it with the elk, ^Elian relates that the wild 

 Scythians used deer instead of horses. But the first good account of the 

 animal is found in the work of Scheffer, published 1675, and in the next 

 century the great Linnaeus, who had personally seen and observed it, 

 gave a complete description of the animal. 



"There is no animal," writes Brehm, "in which the burden of servi- 

 tude, the curse of slavery, is so evident as in the Reindeer. No two 

 creatures of the same family can be so different as the tame and the wild 

 Reindeer. The former is a miserable slave of a poor miserable master, 

 the latter is a lord of the mountain, as agile as the chamois. When we 

 see a troop of wild and a herd of tame Reindeer, it is almost impossible 

 to believe that they are members of the same genus." 



The Reindeer is naturally a child of the mountains, and loves the 

 wide, treeless, mossy plateaux which the natives of Scandinavia call 

 " Fjelds." The barren expanses where a few Alpine plants grow between 

 the rocks, or the heaths covered with Reindeer-moss, are its favorite 

 abode. Woods and woodlands it usually avoids. In the north of Sibe- 

 ria, according to Pallas, it is sometimes found in the forests making 

 annual journeys from the woods to the hills and back again, according 

 to the season. Their chief object in leaving the forests in the summer 

 months appears to be their hope of escaping the continual attacks of 

 mosquitoes and other insect-pests that are found in such profusion about 

 forest land. The principal plague of the Reindeer is one of the gadflies, 

 peculiar to the species, which deposits its eggs in the animal's hide, and 

 subjects it to great pain and continual harassment. Even in the domes- 

 ticated state the Reindeer is obliged to continue its migrations, so that 

 the owners of the tame herds are perforce obliged to become partakers 

 in the annual pilgrimages, and to accompany their charge to the appro- 

 priate localities. 

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