Abstract
The story of Rangifer begins more than a century before it first appeared on any chart in the designation of a group of northern stars left unformed by Ptolemy as “Camelopardalis,” the Giraffe. Richard Hinckley Allen described its stars as “long, faint, and straggling like its namesake.... [stretching] from the pole-star to Perseus, Auriga, and the Lynx, the hind quarters within the Milky Way.” Allen thought that it was originally introduced by Jacob Bartsch, “who published it, in outline only, in 1614, and wrote that it represented to him the Camel that brought Rebecca to Isaac.” None of the early depictions of this constellation show it as a camel, so this origin story seems unlikely. Rather, Allen asked whether the Bartsch story explained why Richard Anthony Proctor “changed its title to Camelus,” although he pointed out that the only nineteenth century work to adopt the name change was the 1894 edition of Flammarion’s Astronomie Populaire. Bartsch did indeed describe a camel in Usus Astronomicus (1624) but in turn incorrectly attributed its introduction to Isaac Habrecht (1621).
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Notes
- 1.
“Formed from various other faint stars belonging to Cassiopeia and Cepheus.” (Bode, 1801a); “Bounded by Ursa Minor, Cepheus, Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis.” (Green, 1824); “Situated between the middle of the Shephed and the Pole-Star.” (Kendall, 1845); “Directly north of Cassiopeia, and east of Cepheus.” (Bouvier, 1858); “A small and faint asterism between Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis” (Allen, 1899); “Formed of faint stars between Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis” (Bakich, 1995).
- 2.
Also known as the “Käymäjärvi Inscriptions,” an ancient stone with undeciphered characters of disputed origin in Finnish Lapland.
- 3.
“Ist von le Monnier, zum Andenken des in Lappland beim Nordpol im Jahre 1736 gemessenen Meridiangrades, an den Himmel gesetzt, und aus verschiedenen sonst zur Kassiopeia und dem Cepheus gehörigen kleinen Sternen, formirt.” (Bode, 1801a)
- 4.
F. Oystein and K.H. Roed, “Refugial origins of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus L.) inferred from mitochondrial DNA sequences”. Evolution 57(3), pp. 658–670 (2003).
- 5.
D.E. Wilson and D.M. Reeder, Mammal Species of the World—A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press/Bucknell University (2005).
- 6.
Aldrovandi used tarandus and rangifer to refer to two distinct animals, the reindeer and the deer, respectively. Both were illustrated in Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum historia …, reproduced in Fig. 20.6.
Fig. 20.6 
Engravings of two animals depicted in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s Quadrupedum omnium bisulcorum historia … published at Bologna in 1621. Left: “Tarandus” (Chap. XXX, page 861). Right: “Rangifer” (Chap. XXI, page 863)
- 7.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1968), p. 170.
- 8.
“Les Rennes méritent que nous en disions ici quelque chose. Ce sont des especes de Cerfs, dont les cornes fort rameuses jettent leurs branches sur le front. Ces animaux semblent destinés par la Nature, à remplir tous les besoins des Lappons. Ils leur servent de Chevaux, de Vaches, & de Brebis.
“On attache le Renne à un petit Bateau, appellé Pulka, pointu par devant pour fendre la neige; & un homme, moitié assis, moitié couché dans cette voiture, peut faire la plus grande diligence, pourvu qu’il ne craigne, ni de verser, ni d’être à tous moments submergé dans la neige.
“La Chair des Rennes est excellente à manger, fraîche, ou sêchée. Le lait des femelles est un peu acre, mais aussi gras que la crême du lait des Vaches; il se conserve longtems gelé, & les Lappons eu font des fromages, qui seroient meilleurs, s’ils étoient faits avec un peu plus d’art & de propreté.” (pp. 322–323).
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Barentine, J.C. (2016). Rangifer. In: The Lost Constellations. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22795-5_20
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