THE REIN-DEER. 
247 
diversities alone, have thus been erased from our 
catalogues. 
As in all the other species, the horns of the Rein- 
deer are clothed during their growth with a velvety 
coat, highly vascular in its structure. At an early 
period they contain a substance very like marrow, of 
which the hunters are particularly fond. By the time 
they have reached their full size, their texture has 
become perfectly solid and bony, and the veh^ety coat 
shrivels up and peels off in ragged and irregular por- 
tions. This usually occurs about September ; and in 
two or three months afterwards the old males cast their 
horns. The young males and the pregnant females 
generally retain them until the commencement of the 
spring, but the barren females lose theirs almost as 
early as the males. The Laplanders say that the more 
sound and healthy the animal is, the more speedily 
does it throw off its horns. 
Like the Elk, to which it bears a close relation in 
the palmation of its horns, the Rein-deer is entirely 
destitute of naked muzzle. In shape, as Ceesar long 
since remarked, it partakes both of the Ox and of the 
Stag, resembling the latter in size, in general appear- 
ance, and in zoological characters, but in some degree 
approaching the former in the shape of its head, the 
shortness and thickness of its neck, the thickset make 
of its body, and the brevity and muscularity of its limbs. 
Its head is rarely raised beyond the level of its back, 
and seems to stoop as it were beneath the weight of its 
generally ponderous horns. The great strength of its 
shoulders and forequarters eminently qualifies it for 
those purposes of draught to which it is most commonly 
applied by the Laplanders ; but it is no less admirably 
fitted by the muscularity of its loins for a beast of bur- 
then, in which capacity it is frequently made use of by 
