THE REIN-DEER. 
243 
means of their existence ; without which their land 
would actually be, as at a first glance it seems, a bleak 
and uninhabitable desert. According to M. Cuvier, 
the Baltic forms in Europe its southern limit ; in Asia, 
however, it extends along the Ural chain to the foot of 
the Caucasus ; and we have the authority of a passage 
in Caesar's Commentaries, which can scarcely apply to 
any other animal, for its having existed in his day in 
the Hercynian Forest. The boundaries of this immense 
tract of woodland are certainly not very well defined, 
but this location would imply at all events a more 
southern European habitat than any that is at present 
known. 
Again crossing the Ocean we find the Rein-deer at 
Spitzbergen, in Greenland, and in Newfoundland ; but 
it has been said by Pennant, and this has been lately 
repeated by Dr. Richardson, in his valuable Zoology of 
the Fur Countries of North America, not to be known 
in Iceland. This statement, which was scarcely true 
at the time when Pennant wrote, is not by any means 
correct as refers to the present day. About sixty years 
since, as we learn from Von Troil's Letters on Iceland, 
thirteen of these animals were imported from Norway, 
ten of which dying on the passage, only three were 
landed. These were turned out into the mountains, 
and have since multiplied to such an extent, in the 
interior and unfrequented parts of the country, that 
their progeny was estimated by Count Trampe the 
Governor, in 1809, the period of Dr. Hooker's visit, 
at no less than five thousand head. Herds of forty, 
sixty, or even a hundred individuals, are said, both by 
Dr. Hooker and by Sir George Mackenzie, who visited 
the island in the following summer, to be not uncom- 
mon in the mountains. They are, however, of little 
use to the inhabitants, who have made no attempts to 
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