But, as the same writer remarks, human strength cannot exceed certain limits. The Lapp ages early in life, and dies young. When he attains an advanced age, his fate is still more lamentable. It is said that if an old man falls sick while a tribe is accomplishing one of its customary migrations, his children frequently abandon him,--leaving him with some provisions at the foot of a tree, or on the bank of a stream, with the terrible prospect before him of dying of starvation, or falling a prey to wild beasts. The Lapp is always poor even when he may be called rich; for it is calculated that to maintain a family of four persons, a herd of fully four hundred reindeer is necessary, representing a capital of about £160. * * * * * The Lapp dialect is described as resembling the Finnish. When we remember that the Lapps and the Quénes, or Finns, wear a similar costume, are distinguished by very similar customs, and that the two people call themselves by the same generic name, Suomi, we can understand why some travellers persist in regarding them as sprung from the same common stock. But a careful investigation shows the absolute distinctness of the Lapps from the Finns, notwithstanding this similarity of name and language--a similarity due, as in many other countries, to the influences of conquest or colonization. Some ethnologists, and among them M. D’Omalins, include the Finns among the white, or Caucasian race, and leave the Lapps among the inferior branches of the great Mongol family. It seems certain that a greater difference exists between the Quénes and the Lapps of Northern Norway than between the Quénes and the Scandinavians of the same region. The Quénes have adapted themselves completely to sedentary and agricultural habits, while the Lapps, as yet, have not made a single advance in the direction of raising themselves above a pastoral and nomadic life. On the other hand, Finns constantly intermarry with the Swedes or Norwegians; while unions between Lapps and Scandinavians, or even between Lapps and Finns, are regarded throughout the entire country as monstrous anomalies. Lastly: laying aside the arguments founded upon the physical conformation of the Lapps and the Finns, an important historical consideration seems to prove their distinct co-existence from a period far anterior to the settlement of the Suiones and the Goths in the peninsula; it is that in the Finnish mythology we constantly meet with legends of battles between dwarfs and giants. It is impossible that these can refer to the warfare between the Finns and the Scandinavians, for the latter were of the same stature as the former; and it is in comparison with the Lapps only that the Finns could relatively be called _giants_. * * * * *