When the children are taken out of the cradle, which I have already described (_vol._ 2. _p._ 23), they are dressed in a small garment of reindeer skin. They are usually able to stand on their legs by the time they are four months old, and turn their head and eyes about with a degree of intelligence hardly ever seen in our children at that early age. I never met with any people who lead such easy happy lives as the Laplanders. In summer they make two meals of milk in the course of the day, and when they have gone through their allotted task of milking their reindeer, or making cheese, they resign themselves to indolent tranquillity, not knowing what to do next. In winter their food is cheese, taken once or twice a day, but in the evening they eat meat. A single reindeer supplies four persons with food for a week. This animal has no gall-bladder, nor could I discover the insertion of the biliary duct. The liver however is of a large size. The first stomach is large, with a thick orifice, and lined with a fine cellular network like that of a cow, being moreover longitudinally plaited. The Laplanders are curious dissectors. They take out each of the stomachs separately, with as much care as a professed anatomist. The thread made of sinews, as above described, is never used for sewing _walmal_, which makes their summer clothing, but only for garments composed of fur or leather. Their shoes indeed are mended, as well as made, with it. This last business falls to the lot of the women. The leather is purchased. A good ox may be bought in Norway for three rix-dollars; a female reindeer for one rix-dollar; a castrated male for from twelve to eighteen dollars, silver coin; and a fawn is worth from twelve to eighteen dollars of copper money. Three reindeer, therefore, are but equal to the value of a common ox. I left this place in the evening, proceeding on my journey on foot, and walking all night long, till three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day. Thus I walked six miles at a stretch, before I arrived at another Lapland hut. [Illustration] Nothing occurred particularly worth noticing by the way, except an _Andromeda_ (_tetragona_) with quadrangular shoots, and flowers from the bosoms of the leaves. The stem is woody, procumbent, naked, thread-shaped, variously divided. Branches partly erect, entirely covered with leaves, which are oblong, obtuse, somewhat rounded, concave, keeled, sessile, disposed in an imbricated manner. Flower-stalks solitary, from the bosoms of the leaves, erect, thread-shaped, whitish, each bearing a drooping flower. Calyx five-cleft, purplish, with ovate straight segments. Petal one, half-ovate or bellshaped, exactly resembling the lily of the valley, cut half way down into five erect acute segments. Stamens ten, very short, with horned anthers, scarcely longer than the calyx. Pistil simple, the length of the calyx. Pericarp roundish, with five obtuse angles, erect, of five cells, with several seeds[1].