The elk is only found on this, and the rein-deer on the other, side of the polar circle in Europe and in Asia. We find them in America, in the lower latitudes, because the cold is greater there than in Europe. The rein-deer can bear the most excessive cold; he is found in Spitsbergen; he is common in Greenland, and in the most northern parts of Lapland and Asia. The elk does not approach so near the pole; he inhabits Norway, Sweden, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and all the provinces of Siberia and Tartary, even to the north of China. We meet with him under the name of _Orignal_, and the rein-deer under that of _Caribou_ in Canada, and in all the northern parts of America. Those naturalists, who doubted whether the Orignal was the elk, and the Caribou the rein-deer, had not compared Nature with the testimonies of travellers. These are certainly the same animals, though like all the rest in the New Continent smaller than those in the Old. We may form a more perfect idea of the elk and rein-deer, by comparing them with the stag; the elk is taller, thicker, and stands more erect upon his legs; his neck is shorter, his hair longer, and his antlers wider and heavier than those of the stag. The rein-deer is shorter, his legs are smaller and thicker, and his feet much larger; his hair is very thickly furnished, and his horns much longer and divided into a great number of branches, with flat terminations; while those of the elk appear to have been cut or broached at the edges. Both have long hair under the neck, short tails, and ears much longer than those of the stag; they do not leap nor bound like the roe-buck, but their pace is a kind of trot, so easy and quick, that they go over almost as much ground in the same time, without being in the least fatigued; for they will sometimes continue their trot for two days together, without resting. The rein-deer lives upon the mountains; and the elk dwells in low lands and damp forests; both go in herds like the stags, and both can be tamed, but the rein-deer with greater ease than the elk. The last, like the stag, has never lost his liberty, while the rein-deer has been rendered domestic by the most unenlightened part of mankind. The Laplanders have no other cattle. In this icy climate, which receives only the oblique rays of the sun, where the night and the day comprehend two seasons; where the snow covers the earth from the beginning of autumn to the end of spring, and where the verdure of the summer consists in the bramble, juniper, and moss, where could man expect to procure necessary nourishment for cattle? The horse, the ox, the sheep, and all the other useful animals, could not find subsistence there, nor resist the rigour of the cold; it was therefore necessary to search among the inhabitants of the forest for the least wild and profitable animals; the Laplanders have done what we should be obliged to do ourselves if we were to lose our cattle; we should then