Farther westward in Lapland, the ownership of the deer is different. Every Finn farmer must have his six to eighteen deer for winter traffic, and as the country is more thickly settled there, a great many deer are required. In the summer these are handed over to some Lapp, who will graze them and return them when the snow comes again in good condition for the heavy work. The Lapp gets a fee for his trouble, and takes as a perquisite any increase which may occur whilst the beasts are under his charge. He runs all the deer entrusted to him in this way together in one big herd, and separates them (if so be he should forget the individuals) by their respective ear-markings, which are registered property.
The niceties of scientific breeding are beyond the crude wit of this meat farmer of Arctic Lapland, and though he occasionally does a swap, weight for weight, and age for age, to bring new blood from a distant herd into his own, and so prevent continuous in-breeding, this is about the utmost extent of his efforts. He accepts the new-born calves as they appear, and does his best to keep them in fettle and get them fit for market in the smallest possible time. In summer he drives them through the forests of Arctic willow and birch, where they may browse on the young shoots or eat the crisp moss underfoot. And for the benefit of those that have not seen the performance, I may say it is a quaint sight to watch a solemn reindeer reared up on his hind legs, with his great splay fore-hoofs against a birch trunk, trying to grab the tender foliage which dangles so temptingly just above his hairy muzzle. His one regret, then, is that Nature has not given him wings. But in winter the mountain Lapp herds his deer where the snow blanket is thinnest, so that they may most easily delve down to the moss beneath.
It is a curious sight, also, to see a reindeer-herd feeding in the gloom of the Arctic night, when a six-foot layer of snow intervenes between the glowering sky and its food. Each deer digs for itself a pit, hoeing the white mass with its prominent brow-tines, and scratching out the powdery snow with its forefeet, after the manner of a fox terrier delving for rabbits; so that when it is grazing on the succulent moss below it is quite out of sight from the snow surface above. The deer does not enlarge the floor of this pit to any great extent, and it does not understand the art of making a trench. When one patch of the moss is eaten bare, it clambers to the surface again and makes another pit.