sitory visit to their favourite pastures in the barren country,
but their principal movement to the northward commences generally in the
end of April when the snow first begins to melt on the sides of the hills
and early in May, when large patches of the ground are visible, they are
on the banks of the Copper-Mine River. The females take the lead in this
spring migration and bring forth their young on the sea-coast about the
end of May or beginning of June. There are certain spots or passes
well-known to the Indians, through which the deer invariably pass in
their migrations to and from the coast and it has been observed that they
always travel against the wind. The principal food of the reindeer in the
barren grounds consists of the Cetraria nivalis and cucullata, Cenomyce
rangiferina, Cornicularia ochrileuca, and other lichens, and they also
eat the hay or dry grass which is found in the swamps in autumn. In the
woods they feed on the different lichens which hang from the trees. They
are accustomed to gnaw their fallen antlers and are said also to devour
mice.

The weight of a full-grown barren-ground deer, exclusive of the offal,
varies from ninety to one hundred and thirty pounds. There is however a
much larger kind found in the woody parts of the country whose carcass
weighs from two hundred to two hundred and forty pounds. This kind never
leaves the woods but its skin is as much perforated by the gadfly as that
of the others, a presumptive proof that the smaller species are not
driven to the sea-coast solely by the attacks of that insect. There are a
few reindeer occasionally killed in the spring whose skins are entire and
these are always fat whereas the others are lean at that season. This
insect likewise infests the red-deer (wawaskeesh) but its ova are not
found in the skin of the moose or buffalo, nor, as we have been informed,
of the sheep and goat that inhabit the Rocky Mountains, although the
reindeer found in those parts (which are of an unusually large kind) are
as much tormented by them as the barren-ground variety.

The herds of reindeer are attended in their migrations by bands of wolves
which destroy a great many of them. The Copper Indians kill the reindeer
in the summer with the gun or, taking advantage of a favourable
disposition of the ground, they enclose a herd upon a neck of land and
drive them into a lake where they fall an easy prey but, in the rutting
season and in the spring, when they are