the seventh namma lappotachis. After that period no male is kept, they all perishing in consequence of the exhaustion above mentioned, but the castrated ones live to a more advanced age. None of these animals however survive beyond their twelfth or fourteenth year. When the castrated males become very fat towards autumn, and show signs of old age; or the females, having become barren, appear otherwise to be on the decline, they are killed, by the knife, in the close of the year; from an apprehension that they might otherwise perish of themselves from infirmity, in the course of another season.
Such of the male reindeer as are destined to serve for a stock of provision, are killed before the rutting-time, and their carcases hung up to be exposed to the air and frost before flaying. The flesh is smoked and a little salted, and then laid upon sledges to dry in the sun, that it may keep through the winter till spring. About the feast of St. Matthias (Feb. 24.) the reindeer begin
to be so incommoded with the gad-fly, that they are not in a fit condition to be slain for eating. From that period therefore, till the milking season, the Laplanders are obliged to live on this stock of preserved meat. At other times of the year the females are killed for immediate use, according as they are wanted. The blood is kept fresh in kegs, or other vessels, and serves for food in the spring, being added to the välling (see vol. 1. p. 129), with a small proportion of milk and water. The blood of these animals is thick in consistence, like that of a hog. The Laplanders carry a portion of it along with them from place to place, in bladders or some kind of vessels. A stock of this and all other necessaries is collected as late as possible, before the melting of the snow, while there still remains a track for the sledges.
A kind of blood pudding or sausage is made, in general without flour, and with a large proportion of fat. This the Laplanders call marfi.
The liver of the reindeer, which is of a considerable bulk, is boiled and eaten fresh. The lungs, being salted and moderately dried, are eaten occasionally, or else given to the dogs. The intestines, which abound with fat, are cut open, washed, and boiled fresh; nor are they unpalatable. The brain and testicles are never eaten. The foot is flayed down to the fetlock joint, beyond which the hair cannot, by scalding or any other contrivance, be separated, without the cuticle and skin coming along with it. Even when the feet are boiled, the hair never comes off without the skin. Thus the animal when living is the more firmly protected against the snow. The hoofs are thrown away as useless.
The dung of the reindeer in summer is almost as large as cow-dung, but in winter it more resembles that of the goat.
Each individual reindeer does not bear horns of precisely the same shape every year. The points are very liable to be deformed, in consequence of the animal's
scratching them, while in a growing state, with its feet; they being in that state much inclined to itch, and as tender as the flesh of a fresh fish.
These animals are afflicted with maggots called kornmatskar in their noses and gums, from which they relieve themselves in the spring by snorting and blowing. When the insects lodge on their backs and form pustules there, the people make a practice of squeezing them out, to prevent the reindeer from being too much irritated by them. (This species is the Oestrus nasalis, though the account here given is not very clear; but in the first edition only of the Fauna Suecica Linnæus says, on the authority of a gentleman named Friedenreich, that "this Oestrus lodges its eggs in the frontal sinus of the reindeer in Lapland, and is frequently cast out by them as they travel along in the spring.")