7094 



Quadrupeds. 



In most particulars they resemble the barren-ground species, differing 

 from it in the following points : — smaller horns, darker colour, larger 

 size, not being so gregarious and not migrating. Both species are 

 equally infested with the larvae of a kind of gad-fly, which perforate 

 the skins and cause the animals much pain. These larvse, or others 

 very similar to them, are also found under the mucous membrane at 

 the root of the tongue and in the nostrils, and I have even found them 

 in the brain. The only hides serviceable for converting into leather 

 are those of animals killed early in the winter, which, when subjected 

 to a process similar to that detailed under the head of Moose, and 

 bleached in the frost instead of being smoked, furnish a most beautiful, 

 even and white leather, which is used for shoe-tops, embroidered 

 with quills and silk. The barren-ground reindeer during the summer 

 and spring months frequent the barren plains lying between the wooded 

 country and the shores of Hudson's Bay and the Arctic Sea. Their 

 migrations, which are performed with wonderful regularity, are as 

 follows. They leave the shelter of the woods in the end of March and 

 beginning of April, and resort to the plains, where they feed on various 

 kinds of lichens and mosses, gradually moving northward until they 

 reach the coast, where they bring forth their young in the beginning 

 of June ; in July they begin to retire from the sea-board, and in Octo- 

 ber rest on the edge of the wood, where they remain during the cold 

 of winter. In the northward movement the females lead, while the 

 southward migration is almost invariably headed by a patriarchal 

 male. The horns of these deer are much varied in shape, scarcely 

 any two animals having them precisely alike. The old males shed 

 theirs towards the end of December, the young males and barren 

 females in April, and the gravid females in May. Their hair falls in 

 July, but begins to loosen in May. The new coat is darkish brown 

 and short, but it gradually lengthens and becomes lighter in colour 

 until it obtains the slate-gray tint of winter. A full-grown buck will 

 weigh about a hundredweight. The flesh when in prime condition is 

 very sweet, but bucks, when in season, havs their fat strongly impreg- 

 nated with the flavour of garlic, which indeed is always present more 

 or less. The summer food of the reindeer is lichens, moss and coarse 

 grass ; in the winter it consists of the dried hay of the swamps and 

 the hairy moss adhering to the pine trees. I have seen it stated that 

 these animals in the winter, in order to procure food, shovel away the 

 snow from the ground with their horns, but this theory, however plau- 

 sible, is entirely negatived by the facts of the case, for from my own 

 knowledge, and all that I can learn, both from whites and natives, these 



