74 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 



hunt either Eed-deer or Eeindeer, or whether, as 

 appears to him more likely, the Saga man was under 

 the impression that. raM<?c?^r and hrein were syno- 

 nymous terms.'" 



The author of the Saga, says Professor Boyd 

 Dawkins, must have been well acquainted with the 

 animal in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, and there 

 seems nothing improbable in the natural inference 

 that the animal they called reindeer undoubtedly 

 was one. The inclement hiUs of Caithness He in the 

 same parallel of latitude as the south of Norway and 

 Sweden, in which the animal was living at the time ; 

 and its food, the brushwood, and especially the rein- 

 deer moss {Cladonia rangiferina) is still found exten- 

 sively over Scotland. Indeed, the abundance and 

 variety of lichens is specially noted as a peculiarity in 

 the Statistical Account of the parish of Wick, where 

 the reindeer moss is stated to grow to the height of 

 three or four inches among the heather. 



The jarls of Orkney referred to (Rognvald and 

 Harald), according to Jonseus, hunted in Caithness 

 in 1 1 59. 



There is another point worth notice, as remarked 

 by Professor Boyd Dawkins.t "The Reindeer is men- 

 tioned 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 



* Alston, " Fauna of Scotland" (Mammalia), p. 36 (i88o). 

 t Pojpular Science Review, 1868, p. 43. 



