A recent writer observes that the inferiority of the Lapp race is as conspicuous from the intellectual as from the physical point of view. This is evident from the most cursory glance at their lives and manners. The Lapp is, on the whole, a simple, timid, regular, honest creature. To his great defect we have already adverted,--that excessive partiality for strong liquors, which would be sufficient to bring about the annihilation of his race within a more or less limited period, even if his days were not numbered from every other concurrent cause. He is essentially nomadic. He is perfectly free and independent throughout the solitary wastes which extend from the North Cape to the sixty-fourth degree of latitude; he plants his tent where he pleases, generally close to a wood or lake; and he moves on when the moss all around it has been eaten up. Such a mode of life is, of course, incompatible with the progress of Swedish, Norwegian, and even Finlandish civilization, which, year by year, curtails the territory given up to the migration of the nomadic Lapps. There is about the life of the Lapps, in summer, says Count D’Almeida, a certain charm of independence, which might prove seductive to certain minds, weary of civilization and unwitting of mosquitoes. But in winter, no being of any other race could with impunity endure such privations and sufferings as they undergo. They are compelled to keep a careful watch upon their herds, which are in constant danger from the snow-storms and the wolves. In the hard frosts, when the snow is upwards of three feet in depth, they are compelled to dig it up with their axes, so as to obtain access for their reindeer to the moss, which constitutes their only food in winter. Their vigorous constitutions and their power of enduring privation and climatic rigour, explain how it was that man, in the Glacial Age, though without any of the appliances of civilization, could endure its tremendous severity. What the Lapps can bear in point of toil and want is almost incredible. They suffer, and are strong, in a sense the poet never contemplated. It frequently happens that they are surprised by a snow-hurricane; they sleep on the ground, covered with snow-flakes, which, on awaking, they simply shake off, and pursue their way. In an excess of cold which would chill our blood, even if we were running at the top of our speed, they will fall, in a fit of intoxication, on the ground, and lie there with impunity for hours. It is said that in mid-winter, women, suddenly seized with the pains of childbirth while on the road, are delivered in the snow, without any ill result, either to them or their offspring.