DERIVATION OF “ REINDEER ” 
draught, and as a milk and flesh producer. Indeed 
of the Laplanders and some of the reindeer keepers 
of the North, Cesar’s famous remark of another race 
might be repeated: “Cibus eorum lacte caseo carne 
constat.” Its outward appearance is not on the whole 
unsuggestive of its near neighbour geographically 
speaking, the moose. It has an approach to the long 
and thick upper lip of the latter, while the somewhat 
clumsy feet and legs, and the often palmated horns, add 
to the resemblance. Its feet are planted firmly upon 
the ground, firmly even to splayness ; and this is in re- 
lation to an easy transit over yielding snow and marshy 
land. It is exactly paralleled in the divaricated hoofs 
of Speke’s antelope, which also inhabits swampy, and 
therefore treacherous, ground, but in Africa. Its 
young are not spotted as are those of most deer. Its 
pelage alters in colour from summer to winter as it 
also does in many other deer. As for other points in 
its structure, the reindeer is quite obviously a deer. 
Reindeer the vernacular, and Rangifer the Latin, name 
of this animal appear to be mainly derived from the 
same word ; at least it is certain that the termination 
“fer ’’? does not mean here as that termination in Latin 
generally does mean, a carrier or bearer. It is simply 
the Latin ferum a, beast, which of course is the same 
as deer in English (= Thier in German). As _ for 
“rein ’’ it would seem to be Laplandish. The European 
and Siberian reindeer had in past days a wider range 
than now. In prehistoric times it of course wandered 
south through Britain and France; and its effigies 
scrawled upon tusks by primeval man are well known 
to everyone. But further than this the reindeer seems 
to have inhabited the extreme north of Scotland as late 
as the twelfth century, when in Caithness it was hunted 
for sport. The American reindeer are called by the 
American zoologists Caribou; this is not an Indian 
US 
welol. 
