ABOUT the time that the Beaver was building its dams on the rivers of Wales and Scotland, there was fast becoming extinct in North Britain another animal, whose singular form is perhaps better known than that of most animals, from its being amongst the earliest presented to youthful naturalists in their first zoological picture books-for who does not recollect the portrait of the Laplander with his Reindeer in a sledge?

This animal was one of the earliest arrivals on British soil after the ice and snow of the glacial epoch began to disappear, and it is in caverns and river gravels and sands of post-glacial age that we first meet with its remains. Its abundance in British deposits of this date is very remarkable. Professor Boyd Dawkins has found portions of its bones and horns in no less than thirteen out of twenty-one caverns examined by him, while the Reddeer was only found in seven; thus, contrary to what is generally assumed to be the case, the Reindeer predominated in numbers over the Red-deer at the time the British bone caverns were being filled.

In the post-glacial river deposits the same numerical preponderance of the Reindeer is observed. It has been found in the gravels of Brentford, in a railway cutting at Kew Bridge, and higher up the Thames in a gravel bed at Windsor, where, in the spring of 1867, numerous remains were discovered. On visiting the spot with the discoverer, Capt. Luard, R.E., Professor Boyd Dawkins found that more than one-half of the remains belonged to the Reindeer, the rest to Bisons, Horses, Wolves, and Bears. They had evidently been swept down by the current from some point higher up the stream.* In illustration of this accumulation he quotes a parallel case from the observations of Admiral Von Wrangel in Siberia, who remarks :†-" The migrating

"Early Man in Britain," p. 155.

+ "Siberia and the Polar Sea," translated by Major Sabine, 8vo, 1840, p. 190. The obviously exaggerated figures must be taken to represent the vast numbers of the animals.

body of Reindeer consists of many thousands, and though they are divided into herds of two or three hundred each, yet the herds keep so near together as to form only one immense mass, which is sometimes from fifty to a hundred versts, or thirty to sixty miles, in breadth. They always follow the same route, and in crossing the river Aniuj, near Plobischtsche, they choose a place where a dry valley leads down to a stream on one side and a flat, sandy shore facilitates their landing on another. As each separate herd approaches the river, the deer draw more closely together, and the largest and strongest takes the lead. He advances, closely followed by a few of the others, with head erect, and apparently intent on examining the locality. When he has satisfied himself he enters the river, the rest of the herd crowd after him, and in a few minutes the surface is covered with them. Wolves, bears, and foxes hang upon the flanks and rear of these great migratory bodies, and prey upon the stragglers, and invariably many casualties occur at the fords where the weak or wounded animal is swept away by the current.'

A graphic account is given, by the same author, of the migration of Reindeer as observed by him in his journey through the stony Tundra, near the river Baranicha, in north-eastern Siberia.

“I had hardly finished the observation," he writes, "when my whole attention was called to a highly interesting, and to me a perfectly novel spectacle. Two large migrating bodies of Reindeer passed us at no great distance. They were descending the hills

from the north-west, and crossing the plain on their way to the forests, where they spend the winter. Both bodies of deer extended further than the eye could reach, and formed a compact mass narrowing towards the front. They moved slowly and majestically along, their broad antlers resembling a moving wood of leafless trees. Each body was led by a deer of unusual size, which my guides assured me was always a female. One of the herds was stealthily followed by a Wolf, who was apparently watching for an opportunity of seizing any one of the younger and weaker deer which might fall behind the rest; but on seeing us he made off in another direction. The other column was followed at some distance by a large black Bear, who, however, appeared only intent on digging out a mouse's nest every now and then— so much so that he took no notice of us."

On the warrantable assumption that migrations of a similar character formerly took place in this country, the large assemblage of animal remains at the Reindeer-ford at Windsor is easily accounted for. In the gravels on which Oxford stands, says Professor Boyd Dawkins, the Reindeer is found in greatest abundance; at Bedford it is associated with flint implements, the Red-deer, and Hippopotamus; at Lawford, near Rugby, with the Cave Hyæna; at Fisherton, near Salisbury, with the Cave Lion, Urus, Roedeer, Marmot, and Lemming; in Kent also it is abundant in the brick earth of Sittingbourne and Maidstone; in Somerset in the gravels of the Avon near Bath. Altogether, it has been determined in

ten out of eighteen river deposits which have furnished fossil mammals, while the Red-deer has been found only in nine.*

During the arctic severity of the post-glacial climate the remains of the Red-deer were rare, while those of the Reindeer were most abundant. During the pre-historic period the Red-deer gradually increased in numbers, while the Reindeer as gradually became extinct. In its rarity in the latter epoch we have proof of the great climatal change that had taken place in France and Britain.

Professor Owen, in his "British Fossil Mammals," has figured a skull with antlers of the Reindeer found in a peat-moss on Bilney Moor, near East Dereham, Norfolk, and he gives a figure also of a metatarsal bone of this animal from the fens of Cambridgeshire. During the excavation that was made for the reservoir of the southern outfall of the metropolitan sewage at Crossness Point, on the south side of the Thames, near Erith, a fine antler of the Reindeer was discovered at the bottom of a layer of peat varying from five to fifteen feet in thickness, along with the remains of Beaver and a human skull. Another antler was found in a shell marl underlying the peat near Whittington Hall, Lancashire. Leigh, in his "Natural History of Cheshire" (Bk. III. p. 84), notices a horn of the Reindeer which was found under a Roman altar at Chester.

In Ireland, as we learn from a 'Report on Irish Fossil Mammals' by Dr. Leith Adams ("Proc. Roy.

*Boyd Dawkins, Popular Science Review, January, 1868.