Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — The Useful Reindeer. [ARTICLE]

The Useful Reindeer.

Lapland nourishes no other domestic animal than the reindeer; but in this creature are to be found many useful qualities. No part of the animal is useless. The Laplanders make use of the hair, the skin, the flesh, the bones, the marrow, the blood and the nerves. The skin serves to protect them from the inclemency of the weather; no other flesh thqn that of the reindeer is eaten ;its bones are of astonishing use, for cross-bows and bows, for pointing their arrows, for making spoons and forornaments. Its tongue and the marrow of its bones are the greatest delicacies. They frequently drink the blood, but they generally preserve it in a bladder, which they expose to the cold and allow to become dense by freezing; when they wish to eat it they cut off with

an ax m much aa they desire. They have no other thread than that which they draw from the nerves and shews of thig Animal; with Ahe flneat they sew their ckAes, and with the coarsest they* «ew-the batik of their hots, sledges and cradle*. The milk of the reindeer is the only beveragri* the Laplanders possess; and because it is extremely fat and thick they mix It with nearly an equal quantity <>i water. Very nutritious cheeses are made /rom, this milk; and the poorer Aliases, who cannot afford to kill a doer for its flesh, live on nothing else than milk and cheese. The cheeses are fat and have a strong smell; but being made and eaten without salt, they are quite tasteless.— Hom and School.