122 The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare s Time. 
Shields and targets were made of the skin of the elk, 
which were thick enough to resist the point of the 
sharpest spear. 
In Kennet’s History of Englandl, 1706, we find men¬ 
tion of an animal whose name is not to be found in modem 
dictionaries. We are told that Sir Hierom Bowes, the 
English ambassador to Russia, 1583, was— 
“ the first (if an historian may have leave to mention so trivial a 
matter) who brought into England the beast call’d a machlis, never 
before seen here; it is like an elk, in Latin alee , having no joints in 
the legs and yet wonderful swift. He brought also certain fallow deer 
of admirable swiftness, which being yoked together, would draw a 
man sitting in a sled with incredible speed.” (Vol. ii. p. 493.) 
The machlis was in all probability the elk, and the fallow 
deer were no doubt reindeer. 
Topsell (p. 592) gives us some information, etymo- 
K . d logical and otherwise, concerning that most 
valuable animal to the natives of the cold 
regions which it inhabits, the Reindeer. 
“ This beast is called by the Latines rangifer , by the Germains 
rein, reiner, raineger , reinsthier, by the French raingier, and ranglier , 
and the later Latins call it reingus. It is a beast altogither unknowne 
to the auncient Graecians and Latins, except the machlis that Pliny 
speaketh of be it. This beast was first of all discovered by Olaus 
Magnus in this northerne part of the world, towardes the Poale 
attique, as in Norway, Swetia, and Scandinavia, at the first sight 
whereof he called it raingifer, because he beareth homes on his head like 
the boughes of a tree. This beast chaungeth his colour, according to 
the time of the yeare, and also according to the quality of the place 
wherein he feedeth, which appeareth by this, because some of them are 
found to be of the colour of asses, and shortly after to be like hartes. 
The King of Swetia had ten of them nourished at Lappa, which he 
caused every day to be driven unto the mountains into the colde ayre, 
for they were not able to endure the heat. The mouth of this beast 
is like the mouth of a cow, they many times come out of Laponia 
into Swetia, where they are wonderfully anoied with wolves, but they 
gather themselves togither in a ring, and so fight against their enimies 
with their homes. They are also in their owne naturall countrey 
