the age of four or five. It is at this age that they begin to dress and exercise them for labor. There are both wild and tame reindeer in Lapland; the wild males are more robust and stronger than the tame. The issues of this mixture are preferred for the harness. These reindeer are not so gentle as the others; for they not only sometimes refuse to obey those who guide them, but they often turn furiously upon them, and attack them with their feet, so that there is no other resource, than to cover themselves from their rage by their sledge, until the fury of the beast is subsided. This sledge is so light that they can easily manage it, and cover themselves with it. The bottom of it is lined with the skins of young reindeers; the hairy side is turned against the snow, so that the sledge glides easily forward, and recoils less on the mountains. The harness of the reindeer is only a thong of the hide, with the hairs remaining on it attached to the head, whence it descends towards the breast, passes under the belly, between the legs, and is fastened to a hole which is in the fore part of the sledge. The Laplander has only a single cord by which to guide the animal, and which he throws indifferently upon the back of the beast, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, according as he would direct him, to the right or left. They can travel ten miles an hour; and it is not uncommon for them to make journeys of a hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours. At their utmost speed, and for a short time, they can accomplish near twenty miles in the hour; but the quicker the method of travelling is, the more it is inconvenient; a person must be well accustomed to it, and travel often, to be able to direct the sledge and prevent it from turning over. They can draw three hundred pounds, but the Laplanders usually limit the burthen to two hundred and forty pounds.

The reindeers are all very spirited, and very difficult to manage; they choose the liveliest and the swiftest to draw their sledges, and the more heavy, to travel with their provision and baggage, at a slower pace. These animals are troubled with an insect called the gadfly, during the summer season, which burrowing under their skins the preceding summer, deposit their eggs; so that the skin of the reindeer is often so filled with small holes, that an incurable disorder is brought on. So formidable are the attacks of these insects, that in June, July, and August, the Laplander is compelled to migrate with his deer from the forests to the mountains; without which precaution, he would run the risk of losing the major part of his herd. The reindeer are subject to elope, and voluntarily renew their natural liberty; they must be closely attended, and narrowly watched; they cannot lead them to pasture, but in open places; and in case the herd are numerous, they have need of many persons to guard them, to recall them, and to run after them if they stray. They are all marked, that they may be known again; for it often happens that they stray in the woods, or mix among another herd. In short, the Laplanders are continually occupied in the care of their reindeer, which constitute all their wealth.

The reindeer is the only animal of this species, the female of which has horns like the male. Another singularity which we must not omit, and which is common to the reindeer, and the elk, is, that when these animals run or quicken their pace, their hoofs at every step make a crackling noise, as if all the joints of their legs were disjointing. It is this noise, or perhaps the scent, which informs the wolves of their approach, who run out to meet and seize them; and, if the wolves are many in number, they very often conquer. The reindeer is able to defend himself against a single wolf, not, as may be imagined with his horns, (for they are rather of a disservice to him, than of use,) but with his fore feet, which are very strong; and with which he strikes with such force, as to stun the wolf and drive him away; after which he flies with such speed, as to be no longer in any danger of being overtaken. But he finds a more dangerous, though a less frequent and less numerous enemy than the wolf, in the rosomak, or glutton.

A tame reindeer lives only to the age of fifteen or sixteen years; but it is to be presumed, that the life of the wild reindeer is of much longer duration. This animal, being four years before he arrives at his full growth, must live twenty-eight or thirty years when he is in his natural state.

The mode in which the Dog-rib Indians kill the American reindeer, is curious. The hunters go in pairs, the foremost carrying in one hand the horns and part of the skin of the head of a deer, and in the other a small bundle of twigs, against which he, from time to time, rubs the horns, imitating the gestures peculiar to that animal. His comrade follows, treading exactly in his footsteps, and holding the guns of both in a horizontal position, so that the muzzles project under the arms of him who carries the head. Both hunters have a fillet of white skin round their foreheads, and the foremost has a strip of the same round his wrists. They approach the herd by degrees, raising their legs very slowly, but setting them down somewhat suddenly, after the manner of deer, and always taking care to lift their right or left foot simultaneously. If any of the herd leave off feeding to gaze at this extraordinary phenomenon, it instantly stops and plays its part, by licking its shoulders, and performing other necessary movements. In this way the hunters attain the very centre of the herd, without exciting suspicion, and have leisure to single out the fattest. The hindmost man then pushes forward his comrade's gun, the head is dropped, and they fire at nearly the same instant. The deer scamper off, the hunters trot after them; in a short time the poor animals halt, to ascertain the cause of their terror; their foes stop at the same moment, and having loaded as they ran, greet the gazers with a second fatal discharge. The consternation of the deer increases, they run to and fro, in the utmost confusion, and sometimes a great part of the herd is destroyed in the space of a few hundred yards.

THE

GIRAFFE, OR CAMELOPARD,1

Is one of the tallest, most beautiful, and most harmless animals in nature. The enormous disproportion of its legs, (the fore legs being as long again as the hinder ones,) is a great obstacle to the use of its strength. Its motion is waddling and stiff; it can neither fly from its enemies in its free state, nor serve its master in a domestic one. The species is not very numerous, and has always been confined to the central and southern parts of Africa. M. le Vaillant, the first naturalist who had an opportunity of closely examining the giraffe, gives a full and accurate description of it in his Travels. "The giraffe chews the cud, as all horned animals with cloven feet do. Like them, too, it crops the grass; though seldom, because pasture is scarce in the country which it inhabits. Its ordinary food is the leaf of a sort of mimosa, called by the natives kaneap, and by the planters kamel doorn. The tree being peculiar to the canton, and growing only there, this may be the reason why it takes up its abode in it, and why it is not seen in those regions of the south of Africa where the tree does not grow. This, however, is but a vague conjecture, and which the reports of the ancients seem to contradict.

"Its head is unquestionably the most beautiful part of its body. Its mouth is small; its eyes large and animated. Between the eyes, and above the nose, it has a very distinct and prominent tubercle. This is not a fleshy

1 Camelopardalis giraffa, DESM. This is the only animal of the genus. It has eight lower and no upper incisors; no canines; six upper and six lower molars on each side. Head very long, with a bony tubercle on the forehead, and two osseous peduncles covered with skin, and hairy, terminated by a tuft of bristles; upper lip entire; no lachrymal sinuses; ears pointed; tongue rough, with corneous papilla; eyes large; neck extremely long; withers much elevated; legs slender; a callosity on the sternum; four mammæ.

excrescence, but an enlargement of the bony part, the same as the two little bosses, or protuberances, with which its occiput is armed, and which rise as large as a hen's egg, one on each side of the mane, at its commencement. Its tongue is rough and terminates in a point. Each jaw has six grinders on each side, but the lower jaw only, has eight cutting teeth in front, while the upper jaw has none.

"The hoof is cloven, has no heel, and much resembles that of the ox. It may be observed, however, at the first sight, that the hoof of the fore foot is larger than that of the hind foot. The leg is very slender; but the knee is swelled like that of a stumbling horse, because the animal kneels down to sleep. It has also a large callosity in the middle of the sternum, owing to its usually reposing on it.

"If I had never killed a giraffe, I should have thought, with many other naturalists, that its hind legs were much shorter than the fore ones. This is a mistake; they bear the same proportion to each other as is usual in quadrupeds. I say the same proportion as is usual, because in this respect there are variations, even in animals of the same species. Every one knows, for instance, that mares are lower before than stallions. What deceives us in the giraffe, and occasions this apparent difference between the legs, is the height of the withers, which may exceed that of the crupper from sixteen to twenty inches, according to the age of the animal; and which, when it is seen at a distance in motion, gives the appearance of much greater length to the fore legs.

"If the giraffe stand still, and you view it in the front, the effect is very different. As the fore part of its body is much larger than the hind part, it completely conceals the latter.

"Its gait, when it walks, is neither awkward nor unpleasing; but it is ridiculous enough when it trots; for you would then take it for a limping beast, seeing its head perched at the extremity of a long neck which never bends, swaying backwards and forwards, the neck and head playing in one piece between the shoulders as on an axis. However, as the length of the neck exceeds that of the legs at least four inches, it is evident that the length of the head too taken into the account, it can feed without difficulty, and of course is not obliged either to kneel down or to straddle with his feet, as some authors have asserted. It is, besides, unnecessary for the animal to kneel, as it feeds principally on the boughs of a species of acacia, which it draws down to its mouth with its long and flexible tongue.

"Its mode of defence, like that of the horse and other solidungulous animals, consists in kicking with the heels. But its hind parts are so light, and its jerks so rapid, that the eye cannot follow them. They are even sufficient to defend it against the lion, though they are unable to protect it from the impetuous attack of the tiger.

"Its horns are never employed in fight. I did not perceive it to use them against my dogs; and these weak and useless weapons would seem but an

error of nature, if nature could ever commit error, or fail in her designs. In their youth, the male and female giraffes resemble each other in their exterior. A knot of long hair then terminates their obtuse horns; this peculiarity the female preserves for some time, but at the age of three years the male loses it. At first, the hide is of a light red, but it deepens in color as the animal advances in age, and, at length, it is of a yellow brown in the female, and of a brown bordering on black in the male. The male may, even at a distance, be distinguished from the female by this difference of color. As to the arrangement and form of the spots, the skin varies in both sexes. The female does not stand so high as the male, and the frontal prominence is less marked. She has four teats; and, according to the account given by the natives, she has one young one at a birth, with which she goes twelve months."

Several have been carried to Europe. One was sent as a present to the King of England by the Pacha of Egypt, and arrived there in 1827. It died recently.

"In one point all the observers of the European giraffes agree that they never make any noise whatever. Further, they appear to consider that the animal would be useless to man in a state of domestication. M. Acerbi has an anecdote illustrative of this point:--

"When at Alexandria, I had one day ordered the two giraffes (a male and female) taken at Darfûr, to be led up and down the square in front of my house; among the crowd collected on the occasion were some Bedouins of the Desert. On inquiring of one of them whether he had ever seen similar animals before-he replied that he had not; and I then asked him in Arabic, ‘Taìb di? Do they please you?' To which he rejoined, 'Mustaib,' or, 'I do not like them.' Having desired my interpreter to inquire the grounds of his disapproval, he answered, 'that it did not carry like a horse, it did not serve for field labors like an ox, did not yield hair like a camel, nor flesh and milk like a goat; and on this account it was not to his liking.'"

This animal, though unknown to the Greeks, is described by Pliny and Oppian, and Julius Cæsar brought one to Europe in the year of Rome 708, after which they were frequently used in the circus or triumphal processions. Its ancient denomination was zurapha, from which the modern name of giraffe is derived.

THE COMMON ANTELOPEJ

In size it is rather smaller than the fallow deer. Its color is a dusky brown, mixed with red; the belly, breast, and inside of the limbs, are white;

1 Antilope cervicapra, DESM. The genus Antilope has eight lower and no upper incisors; no canines; twelve upper and twelve lower molars. Horns in both sexes or in the males only, covering a solid long core, round, compressed, variously influted, and often marked by transverse annulations, or a projecting spiral ridge, sometimes bifurcated; muzzle partly naked in the greater number; often lachrymal sinuses; ears large; legs slender; two or four mamma.