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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
to the extent of fifteen tynes. There is a third horn in the 
middle of its forehead, with other shorter tynes surrounding it.” 
At this time he was Archbishop of Upsal, and primate of the 
G-oths and Swedes, and therefore ought to have known some- 
thing about the animal that lived in his own jurisdiction. 
Besides this erroneous description, he actually figures the animal 
v/ith three horns. It is clear, from the History of Laplanf by 
John Scheffer,* that he was in the habit of visiting the northern 
parts of his diocese, and if so he must have seen the animal 
with his own eyes. He seems, however, to have preferred the 
testimony of another bishop, who lived in a country where the 
animal did not exist. On the whole, a more untrustworthy 
writer than this archbishop perhaps never wrote a book, for he 
has not only believed every one of the myths current in his day, 
such as griffins, sea horses, whales swallowing ships, and the 
like, but he has even given woodcuts of them, which have not 
the slightest foundation in fact. 
We come now to a notice of the animal which has certainly 
not met with the attention it deserved in England. In the 
Orkneyinga Saga the reindeer is incidentally mentioned ; the 
passage is thus translated by a learned Icelander, Jonas Jonaeus,! 
Solebant comites quavis fere aestate in Katenesum transire, 
ibique in desertis /eras rubras et rangiferas venari.” The Jarls 
of Orkney were in the habit of crossing over to Caithness every 
summer, and there hunting in the wilds the red and the rein- 
deer. J Torfaeus, writing at the end of the seventeenth centuiy, 
has translated rauddyri,” by capreae, or goats, and his mistake 
has been followed by Dr. Flemming, § who quoted him without 
consulting the original. Dr. Hibbert,|| however, has given an 
elaborate critique on the disputed passage, and agrees with 
Jonaeus in believing that the reinxieer was hunted in Scotland 
by the Jarls of Orkney in the twelfth century. Professor Brandt, 
of St. Petersburgh, is also of the same opinion. The authors of 
the Saga must have been well acquainted with the animal in 
Norway, Sweden, and Iceland ; and there seems to me nothing 
improbable in the natural inference that the animal they called 
reindeer was undoubtedly one. There is not the slightest record 
of the animal having lived in historic times in England or 
Wales. The Komans never conquered Caithness, and the high- 
* Lapponia. 4to., 1673. 
t He published in 1780 an abstract and Latin translation of the “ Saga.” 
The passage in the original is as follows : “ That var sithr Jarla n£er hvert 
surnar at fara yfer a Katanes oc thar upp a merkr at yeida randdyri edr 
hreina,” The two Jarls in question, llonald and Harold, hunted in Caithness, 
according to .Jongeus, in 1169. 
X Kerum Oread. Hist. lib. i. cap. 36. 
§ British Animals. 1828. 8vo. 
II Brewster’s Edinburgh Journ. Sc., New Series, vol. v. p. 50. 
