REINDEER. An animal of the deer kind, generally described as having horns ramose, recurvated round with palmated summits. When full grown, this animal, according to Pennant, is four feet six inches high, the body of a somewhat thick and square form, and the legs shorter than those of the common stag. The general colour is brown above and white beneath, but advancing in age it frequently be comes of a grayish white, and sometimes al most black. Both sexes are furnished with horns ; those of the male are much larger and longer than those of the To the Lap lander this animal is considered as the com mon substitute of the horse, the cow, the sheep, and the goat. The milk furnishes cheese, the flesh food, the skin clothing, the tendons bow strings, and, when split, thread, the horns glue, and the hones spoons. A Laplander is some times posseaset1 of a thousand deer. Their chief food is a species of moss, which covers vast tracts of the northern regions. This they find in abundance during the summer, but m winter their fodder is scarce, and then the greatest care and attention are required for their support. Trained when young to draw the sledge, their services are of the ut most importance when grown to maturity.
They will then proceed about thirty miles per day without sustaining any injury, and some times when pressed, from fifty to sixty; but such journeys generally prove fatal to the ani mal. The reindeer is a native of the northern regions. In Europe its chief residence is Nor way and Lapland. In Asia, Siberia and Kamt schatka. In America, Greenland and the neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay, but it is rare ly found to the south of Canada. A few years since an attempt was made to introduce the breed into England, but success did not equal expectation. The common deer are more preserved in England than in any other coun try. They are said to have been first intro duced into Scotland from Norway, by James I. and from thence into South Britain. They now abound in almost every country. Of these animals, under the generic term cervus, there are many species, differing from each other in habit and appearance, the particulars of which may be found in works on natural hietory.