THE MOOSE
{Alee, Hamilton Smith; Alee Americanus, Jardine.)

Muzzle very broad, produced, covered with hair, except a small, moist, naked spot in front of the nostrils. Neck short and thick; hair thick and brittle; throat rather maned in both sexes; hind legs have the tuft of hair rather above the middle of the metatarsus; the males have palmate horns. The nose cavity in the skull is very large, reaching behind to a line over the front of the grinders; the inter-maxillaries are very long, but do not reach to the nasal. The nasals are very short.

In the foregoing diagnosis, taken from “GraysKnowsley Menagerie,” are summed up the principal characteristics of the elk in the Old and New Worlds. In colour alone the American moose presents an unimportant difference to the Swedish elk; being much darker; its coat at the close of summer quite black, when the males are in their prime. The European animal varies according Jo season from brown to dark mouse-grey. In old bulls of the American variety the coat is inclined to assume a grizzly hue. The extremities only of the hairs are black; towards the centre they become of a light ashy-grey, and finally, towards the roots, dull white—the difference of colour in the hair of the two varieties thus being quite superficial. The males have a fleshy appendage to the throat, termed the bell, from which and the contiguous parts of the throat long black hair grows profusely. A long, erect mane surmounts the neck from the base of the skull to the withers. Its bristles are of a lighter colour than those of the coat, and partake of a reddish hue. At the base of the hair the neck and shoulders are covered with a quantity of very fine soft wool, curled and interwoven with the hair. Of this down warm gloves of an extraordinarily soft texture are woven by the Indians.

Moose hair is very brittle and inelastic. Towards its junction with the skin it becomes wavy, the barrel of each hair suddenly contracting like the handle of an oar just before it enters the skin.

Gilbert White, speaking of a female moose deer which he had inspected, says: “The grand distinction between this deer and any other species that I have ever met with consisted in the strange length of its legs, on which it was tilted up, much in the manner of birds of the grallse order.” This length of limb is due, according to Professor Owen, “to the peculiar length of the cannon bones (metacarpi and metatarsi).”

The other noticeable peculiarities of the elk are the great length of the head and ear, and the muscular development of the upper lip; the movements of which, directed by four powerful muscles arising from the maxil-laries, prove its fitness as a prehensile organ. In form it has been said to be intermediate between the snout of the horse and of the tapir. I am indebted to Mr. Buck-land for the following description of a skull, which had been forwarded to him from Nova Scotia :—

“This splendid skull weighs ten pounds eleven ounces, and is twenty-four inches and a-half in length. The inter-maxillary bones are very much, prolonged, to give attachment to the great muscle or upper prehensile lip, and the foramen in the bone for the nerve, which supplies the ‘muffle’ with sensation, is very large. I can almost get my little finger into it. The ethmoid bone, upon which the nerves of smelling ramify themselves, is very much developed. No wonder the hunter has such difficulty in getting near a beast whose nose will telegraph the signal of dangers to the brain, even when the danger is a long way off, and the ‘walking danger' if I have read the habits of North American Indians, is in itself of a highly odoriferous character. The cavities for the eyes are wide and deep. I should say the moose has great mobility of the eye. The cavity for the peculiar gland in front of the eye is greatly scooped out. The process at the back of the head for the attachment of the ligamentum nuchse—the elastic ligament which, like an india-rubber spring, supports the weight of the massive head and ponderous horns without fatigue to the owner, is much developed. The enamel on the molar teeth forms islands with the dentine somewhat like the pattern of the tooth of the common cow.”

The height of the elk at the withers but little exceeds that at the buttock; the back consequently has not that slope to the rear so often misrepresented in drawings of the animal. The appearance of extra height forwards is given by the mane, which stands out from the ridge of the neck, something like the bristles of an inverted hearth-broom. The ears, which are considerably over a foot in length in the adult animal, are of a light brown, with a narrow marginal dark-brown rim; the cavity is filled with thick whitish-yellow hair. The naked skin fringing the orbit of the eye is a dull pink; the eye itself of a dark sepia colour. Under the orbit there is an arc of very dark hair. The lashes of the upper lid are full, and rather over an inch in length. A large specimen will measure six feet six inches in height at the shoulder; length of head from occiput to point of muffle, following the curve, thirty-one inches; from occiput to top of withers in a straight line, twenty-nine inches ; and from the last point horizontally to a vertical tangent of the buttocks, fifty-two inches. A large number of measurements in my possession, for the accuracy of which I can vouch, show much variation of the length of back in proportion to the height, thus probably accounting for a commonly received opinion amongst the white settlers of the backwoods that there are two varieties of the moose.

The study of northern zoology presents a variety of considerations interesting both to the student of recent nature and to the palaeontologist. Taking as well known instances the reindeer and musk-ox, there are’ forms yet inhabiting the arctic and sub-arctic regions which may be justly regarded as the remains of an ancient fauna which once comprised many species now long since extinct, and which with those already named, occupied a far greater southerly extent of each of the continents converging on the pole than would be possible under the present climatal conditions of the world. With those great types which have entirely disappeared before man had recorded their existence in the pages of history, including the mammoth (Elephas primigenius), the most abundant of the fossil pachyderms, whose bones so crowd the beaches and islands of the Polar Sea that in parts the soil seems altogether composed of them, the Ehinoceros tichorinus, and others, were associated genera, a few species of which lived on into the historic period, and have since become extinct, whilst others, occupying restricted territory, are apparently on the verge of disappearance. “All the species of European pliocene bovidae came down to the historical period,” states Professor Owen in his “British Fossil Mammals“ and the aurochs and musk-ox still exist; but the one owes its preservation to special imperial protection, and the other has been driven, like the reindeer, to high northern latitudes." Well authenticated as is the occurrence of the rangifer as a fossil deer of the upper tertiaries, the evidence of its association in ages so remote, with Cervus Alces, has been somewhat a matter of doubt. The elk and the reindeer have always been associated in descriptions of the zoology of high latitudes by modern naturalists, as they were when the boreal climate, coniferous forests, and mossy bogs of ancient Gaul brought them under notice of the classic pens of Caesar, Pausanias, and Pliny. And there is a something in common to both of these singular deer which would seem to connect them equally with the period when they and the gigantic contemporary genera now extinct roamed over so large a portion of the earth's surface in the north temperate zone, where the fir-tree—itself geologically typical of a great antiquity—constituted a predominant vegetation.

The presence of the remains of Cervus Alces in association with those of the mammoth, the great fossil musk-ox (Ovibos), the fossil reindeer, and two forms of bison in the fossiliferous ice-cliffs of Eschscholtz Bay, as described by Sir John Eichardson, would seem to be an almost decisive proof of its existence at a time when the temperature on the shores of the Polar Sea was sufficiently genial to allow of a vegetation affording browse and cover to the great herds of mammals which have left their bones there, with Buried, fossilised trees, attesting the presence of a forest at. a latitude now unapproached save by shrubs, such as the dwarf birch, and by that only at a considerable distance to the south. The elk of the present day, as we understand his habits, unlike the musk-ox and reindeer, for which lichens and scanty grasses in the valleys of the barren grounds under the Polar circle afford a sufficient sustenance, is almost exclusively a wood-eater, and could not have lived at the locality above indicated under the present physical aspects of the coasts of Arctic America, any more than the herds of buffaloes, horses, oxen and sheep, whose remains are mentioned by Admiral Yon Wrangell as having been found in the greatest, profusion in the interior of the islands of New Siberia, associated with mammoth bones, could now exist in that icy wilderness. On these grounds a high antiquity is claimed for the sub-genus Alces, probably as great as that of the reindeer.

As a British fossil mammal, the true elk has not yet been described, though for a long time the remains of the now well-defined sub-genus Megaceros were ascribed to the former animal. There is a statement, however, in a recent volume of the “Zoologist” to the effect that the painting of a deers head and horns, which were dug out of a marl pit in Forfarshire, and presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, is referable to neither the fallow, red, nor extinct Irish deer, but to the elk, which may be therefore regarded as having once inhabited Scotland. The only recorded instance of its occurrence in England is the discovery, a few years since, of a single horn at the bottom of a bog on the Tyne. It was found lying on, not in, the drift, and therefore can be only regarded as recent.

Passing on to prehistoric times, when the remains of the species found in connexion with human implements prove its subserviency as an article of food to the hunters of old, we find the bones of Cervus Alces in the Swiss lake dwellings, and the refuse-heaps of that age; whilst in a recent work on travel in Palestine by the Rev. H. B. Tristram, we have evidence of the great and ancient fauna which then overspread temperate Europe and Asia having had a yet more southerly extension, for he discovers a limestone cavern in the Lebanon, near Beyrout, containing a breccious deposit teeming with the debris of the feasts of prehistoric man—flint chippings, evidently used as knives, mixed with bones in fragments and teeth, assignable to red or reindeer, a bison, and an elk. “If,” says the author, “as Mr. Dawkins considers, these teeth are referable to those now exclusively northern quadrupeds, we have evidence of the reindeer and elk having been the food of man in the Lebanon not long before the historic period; for there is no necessity to put back to any date of immeasurable antiquity the deposition of these remains in a limestone cavern. And,” he adds, with significant reference to the great extension of the ancient zoological province of which we are speaking, “there is nothing more extraordinary in this occurrence than in the discovery of the bones of the tailless hare of Siberia in the breccias of Sardinia and Corsica.”

The first allusion to the elk in the pages of history is made by Caesar in the sixth book “De Bello Gallico”— “sunt item qiicB appellantur Alces” etc. etc., a description of an animal inhabiting the great Iiercynian forest of ancient Germany, in common with some other remarkable ferae, also mentioned, which can refer to no other, the name being evidently Latinised from the old Teutonic cognomen of elg, elch, or aelg, whence also our own term elk. He speaks of the forest as commencing near the territories of the Helvetii, and extending eastward along the Danube to the country inhabited by the Dacians. “Under this general name,” says Dr. Smith, “Caesar appears to have included all the mountains and forests in the south and centre of Germany, the Black Forest, Odenwald, Thiiringenwald, the Hartz, the Erzgebirge, the Eiesengebirge, etc., etc. As the Eomans became better acquainted with Germany, ‘ the name was confined to narrower limits. Pliny and Tacitus use it to indicate Jhe range of mountains between the Thiiringenwald and the Carpathians. The name is still preserved in the modem Harz and Erz.” Gronovius states that the German word was Hirtsenwald, or forest of stags. In an old translation of the Commentaries I find the word “alces” rendered a kind of wild asses, and really a better term could hardly be applied, had the writer, unacquainted with the animal, caught a passing glimpse of an elk, especially of a young one without horns. But it is evident that Caesar alludes to a large species of deer, and, although he compares them to goats (it is nearly certain that the original word was “capreis,” “caprea” being a kind of wild goat or roebuck), and received from his informants the story of their being jointless—an attribute, in those days of popular errors and superstitions, ascribed to other animals as well—the very fact of their being hunted in the manner described, by weakening trees, so that the animal leaning against them, would break them down, involving his own fall, proves that the alee was a creature of ponderous bulk.

The descriptive paragraph alluded to contains one of the fallacies which have always been attached to the natural history of the elk, ancient and modem; and, even now-a-days the singular appearance of the animal attempting to browse on a low shrub close to the ground, his legs not bent at the joint, but straddling stiffly as he endeavours to cull the morsel with his long, prehensile upper lip, might impart to the ignorant observer the idea that the stilt-like legs were jointless. The fabrication of their being hunted in the way described was, of course, based on the popular error as to the formation of their limbs. “Mutilceque sunt cornibus” may imply that Caesar, or more likely some of his men, had either seen a female elk, or—as might be more acceptably inferred—a male which had lost one horn, and consequently late in the autumn, as it is well known that the horns are not shed simultaneously. Pausanias speaks of the elk as intermediate between the stag and the camel, as a most sagacious animal, and capable of distinguishing the odour of a human being at a great distance, taken by hunters in the same manner as is now pursued in the “skall” of north Europe, and as being indigenous to the country of the Celtae; whilst Pliny declares it to be a native of Scandinavia, and states that at his time it had not been exhibited at the Roman games. At a later period the animal became better known, for Julius Capitolinus speaks of elks being shown by Gordian, and Vopiscus mentions that Aurelian exhibited the rare spectacle of the elk, the tiger, and the giraffe, when he triumphed over Zenobia.

In these few notices is summed up all that has been preserved of what may be termed the ancient history of the European elk. An interesting reflection is suggested as to what were the physical features of central Europe in those days. It seems evident that ancient France, then called Gaul, was a region of alternate forests and morasses in which besides the red and the roe, the reindeer abounded, if not the elk; that in crossing the Alps, a vast, continuous forest, commencing on the confines of modern Switzerland, occupied the valleys and slopes of the Alps, from the sources of the Rhine to an eastern boundary indicated by the Carpathian mountains, and embraced, as far as its northern extension was known, the plateau of Bohemia. Strange and fierce animals, hitherto unknown to the Romans—accustomed as they had been to seeing menageries of creatures brought from other climes, dragged in processions and into the arena —were found in these forests. The urus or wild bull, now long extinct, “in size,” says Cfaesar, “little less than the elephant, and which spares neither man nor beast when they have been presented to his view.” The savage aurochs yet preserved in a Lithuanian forest, the elk and the reindeer were their denizens, and formed the beef and venison on which the fierce German hunters of old subsisted. “The hunting of that day” may be well imagined to have been very different to the most exciting of modern field sports, and continued down to the thirteenth century, as is shown by the well-known passage from the Niebelungen poem, where the hero, Sifrid, slays some of the great herbivorse—the bison, the elk, and the urus— as well as “einen grimmen Schelch,” about the identity of which so much doubt has arisen, though the conjecture has been offered by Goldfuss, Major Hamilton Smith, and others, that the name refers to no other than the great Irish elk or megaceros.

The recent notices of the elk contained in some curious old works on the countries of northern Europe and their natural history are valuable merely as indicating the presence and range of the animal in certain regions. The errors and extravagances of the classic naturalists still obtained, and tinged all such writings to the commencement of the great epoch of modem natural history ushered in by St. Hilaire and Cuvier. A confused account of the animal is given by Scaliger, and it is mentioned by Gmelin in his Asiatic travels. Olaus Magnus, the Swedish bishop, says, “The elks come from the north, where the inhabitants call them clg or clges". SchefFer, in his history of Lapland, published in 1701, speaks of that country “ as not containing many elks, but that they rather pass thither out of Lithuania.” Other writers mention it, but, whenever a scientific description is attempted it is full of credulous errors, such as its liability to epileptic fits—a belief entertained not only by the peasants of northern Europe, but likewise, with regard to the moose, by the North American Indians; its attempt to relieve itself of the disease by opening a vein behind the ear with the hind foot, whence pieces of the hoof were worn by the peasants as a preventive against falling sickness; and its being obliged to browse backwards through the upper lip. becoming entangled with the teeth.* There are also ample notices of the elk in the works of Pontoppidan and Nilsson; Albertus Magnus and Gesner state that in the twelfth century it was met with in Sclavonia and Hungary. The former writer calls it the equicervus or horse hart. In 1658 Edward Topsel published his te History of Fourfooted Beasts and Serpents: to be procured at the Bible, on Ludgate-hill, and at the Key, in Pauls Churchyard.” At page 165 he treats of the elk: “They are not found but in the colder northern regions, as Eussia, Prussia, Hungaria, and Illyria, in the wood; Hercynia, and among the Borussian Scythians, but most plentiful in Scandinavia, which Pausanias calleth the Celtes ”

*Mr. Buckland, referring to the above statement in “Land and Water,” says:—“Of course some part of the elk was used medicinally. Our ancestors managed to get a ‘pill et haustus’ out of all things, from vipers up to the moss in human skulls. The Pharmacopoeia of the day prescribes a portion of the hoof worn in a ring; ‘ it resisteth and freeth from the falling evil, the cramp, and cureth the fits or pangs.' Fancy an hysterical lady being told to take ‘elk’s hoof’ for a week, to be followed by ‘ hart’s horn.’ ”

The accounts given by the earlier American voyagers of Cervus Alces—there found under the titles of moose (Indian) or Voriginal (French)—were also highly exaggerated ; though, considering that they received their descriptions from the Indians, who to this day believe in many romantic traditions concerning the animal, they are excusable enough. From the writings of Josselyn,1 Denys, Charlevoix, Le Hontan, and others, little can be learnt of the natural history of the moose. Suffice it to say, that they represented it as being ten or twelve feet in height, with monstrous antlers, stalking through the forest and browsing on the foliage at an astonishing elevation. It was consequently long believed that the American animal was much larger than his European congener ; and when the gigantic horns of the Megaceros were first ascribed to an elk, it was to the former that they were referred by Dr. Molyneux.

Commencing its modern history, let us now briefly trace the limits within which the elk is found in Europe, Asia, and—regarding the moose as at least congeneric— America. It is to the sportsmen and naturalists who have recently written on the field sports of the Scandinavian Peninsula that we are indebted for nearly all our information on the natural history of this animal, and its geographical distribution in northern Europe. The works of Messrs. Lloyd and Barnard contain ample notices. “At the present day,5' says the latter author, “ it is found in Sweden, south of the province of East Gothland. Angermannland is its northernmost boundary.55 The late Mr. Wheelwright, in “ Ten Years in Sweden,55 which contains an admirable synopsis of the fauna and flora of that country, places the limits of the elk in Scandinavia between 58° North lat. and 64°. Mr. Barnard states that “ it likewise inhabits Finland, Lithuania, and Eussia, from the White Sea to the Caucasus. It is also found in the forests of Siberia to the Eiver Lena, and in the neighbourhood of the Altai mountains.55 Yon Wrangel met with the elk—though becoming scarce, through excessive hunting and the desolation of the forest by fire—in the Kolymsk district, in the almost extreme north-east of Siberia. Erman, another eminent scientific traveller in Siberia, describes it as abundant in the splendid pine forests which skirt the Obi, and mentions it on several occasions in the narrative of his journey eastward through the heart of the country to Okhotsk. It has been recently noticed amongst the mammalia of Amoorland, and as principally inhabiting the country round the lower Amoor. It is thus seen that the domains of the elk in the Eastern Hemisphere are immensely extensive, lying between the Arctic Circle—indeed, approaching the Arctic Ocean, where the great rivers induce a northern extension of the wooded region—and the fiftieth parallel of north latitude, from which, however, as it meets greater civilisation in the western portion of the Russian empire, it recedes towards the sixtieth.

In the New World, it would appear from old narratives that the moose (as we must unfortunately continue to call the elk, whose proper title has been misappropriated to Cervus canadensis) once extended as far south as the Ohio. Later accounts represent its southern limit on the Atlantic coast to be the Bay of Fundy^ the countries bordering which—Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the State of Maine—appear to be the most favourite abode of the moose; for nowhere in the northern and western extension of the North American forest do we find this animal so numerous as in these districts. Absent from the islands of Prince Edward, Anticosti, and Newfoundland, it is found on the Atlantic sea-board, and to the north of New Brunswick, in the province of Gaspe; across the St. Lawrence, not further to the eastward than the Saguenay, though it was met with formerly on the Labrador as far as the river Godbout. The absence of the moose in Newfoundland appears unaccountable; for, although a large portion of this great island is composed of open moss-covered plateaux and broad savannahs —favourite resorts of the cariboo or American reindeer— yet it contains tracts of forest, principally coniferous, of considerable extent, in which birch, willow, and swamp-maple are sufficiently abundant to afford an ample subsistence to the former animal, which is stated by Sir J. Richardson to ascend the rivers in the northwest of America nearly to the Arctic Circle—as far, in fact, as the willows grow on the banks.

Assuming that the moose is still found in New Hampshire and Vermont, where it exists, according to Audubon and Bachman, at long intervals, we may therefore define its limits on the eastern coasts of North America as lying between 43° 30' and the fiftieth parallel of latitude.

In following the lines of limitation of the species across the continent, we perceive an easy guide in considering its natural vegetation. As regards the general features of the forests which the moose affects, we find them principally characterised by the presence of the fir tribe and their associations of damp swamps and soft open bogs, provided that they are sufficiently removed from the region of perpetual ground-frost to allow of the requisite growth of deciduous shrubs and trees on which the animal subsists. The best indication, therefore, of the dispersion of the moose through the interior of the continent is afforded by tracing the development of the forest southwards from the northern limit of the growth of trees.

The North American forest has its most arctic extension in the north-west, where it is almost altogether composed of white spruce (Abies alba), a conifer which, when met with in far more genial latitudes, appears to prefer bleak and exposed situations. Several species of Salix fringe the river banks, and feeding on these we first find the moose, even on the shores of the Arctic Sea, where Franklin states it to have been seen at the mouth of the Mackenzie, in latitude 69°. Further to the eastward Richardson assigns 65° as the highest limit of its range ; and in this direction it follows the general course of the coniferous forest in its rapid recession from the arctic circle, determined by the line of perpetual ground-frost, which comes down on the Atlantic sea-board to the fifty-ninth parallel, cutting off a large section of Labrador. To the northward of this line are the treeless wastes, termed barren-grounds, the territory of the small arctic cariboo.

The monotonous character and paucity of species of the evergreen forest in its southern extension continues until the valley of the Saskatchewan is reached, where some new types of deciduous trees appear—balsam-poplar, and maple—forming a great addition to the hitherto scanty fare of the moose. Here, however, the forest is divided into two streams by the north-western corner of the great prairies—the one following the slopes of the Eocky Mountains, whilst the other edges the plains to the south of Winipeg and the Canadian lakes. In the former district, and west of the mountains, the Columbia river is assigned as the limit of the moose. On the other course the animal appears to be co-occupant with the wapiti, or prairie elk, of the numerous spurs of forest which jut out into the plains, and of the isolated patches locally termed moose-woods. Constantly receiving accession of species in its south-westerly extension, the Canadian forest is fully developed at Lake Superior, and there exhibits that pleasing admixture of deciduous trees with the nobler conifers—the white pine and the hemlock spruce—which conduces to its peculiarly beautiful aspect. This large tract of forest, which, embracing the great lakes and the shores of the St. Lawrence, stretches away to the Atlantic sea-board, and covers the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward's Island, including a large portion of the Northern States, has been termed by Dr. Cooper, in his excellent monograph on the North American forest-trees, the Lacustrian Province, from the number of its great lakes; it is chiefly characterised by the predominance of evergreen coniferse. It was all at one time plentifully occupied by the moose, which is now but just frequent enough in its almost inaccessible retreats in the Adirondack hills to be classed amongst the quadrupeds of the State of New York. The range of the animal across the continent is thus indicated, and its association with the physical features of the American forest. As before remarked, the neighbourhood of the Bay of Fundy appears to be its present most favoured habitat; and it seems to rejoice especially in the low-lying, swampy woods, and innumerable lakes and river-basins of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

The scientific diagnosis of the Alcine groups (Hamilton Smith) having been detailed already, we pass on to describe the habits of the American moose—the result of a long period of personal observation in the localities last mentioned. First, however, a few remarks on the specific identity of the true elks of the two hemispheres seem as much called for at this time as when Gilbert White, writing exactly a century ago, asks, “Please to let me hear if my female moose” (one that he had inspected at Goodwood, and belonging to the Duke of Richmond) “corresponds with that you saw; and whether you still think that the American moose and European elk are the same creature?” In reference to this interesting question, my own recent careful observations and measurements of the Swedish elks at Sandringham compared with living specimens of moose of the same age examined in America, convince me of their identity; whilst the late lamented Mr. Wheelwright, with whom I have had an interesting correspondence on the subject, states in “Ten Years in Sweden:“ The habits, size, colour, and form of our Swedish elk so precisely agree with those of the North American moose in every respect, that unless some minute osteological difference can be found to exist (as in the case of the beavers of the two countries), I think we may fairly consider them as one and the same animal”* The only difference of this nature that I ever heard of as supposed to exist, consisted in a greater breadth being accredited to the skull, at the most protuberant part of the maxillaries, in the case of the European elk. This I find is set aside in the comparative diagnosis at the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in which no grounds of distinction whatever are evidenced.

I consider that this and the other arctic deer—the rangifers (excepting, perhaps, in the latter instance the small barren-ground cariboo, which is probably a distinct species)—owe any differences of colour or size, or even shape of the antler, to local variation, influenced by the physical features of the country they inhabit. There is more variation in the woodland cariboo of America in i ’3 distribution across the continent than I am able to perceive between the elks of the Old and New World. As migratory deer, occupying the same great zoological province, almost united in its arctic margin, we need not look for difference of species as we do in the case of animals whose zones of existence are more remote from the Pole, and where we find identical species replaced by typical.

The remark of an old writer that the elk is a “melan-cholick beast, fearful to be seen, delighting in nothing but moisture,” expresses the cautious and retiring habits of the moose, and the partiality which it evinces for the long, mossy swamps, where the animal treads deeply and noiselessly on a soft cushion of sphagnum. These swamps are of frequent occurrence round the margins of lakes, and occupy low ground everywhere. They are covered by a rank growth of black spruce (Abies nigra), of stunted and unhealthy appearance, their roots perpetually bathed by the chilling water which underlies the sphagnum, and their contorted branches shaggy with usnea. The cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) grows luxuriantly ; and its waving fronds, tinged orange-brown in the fall of the year, present a pleasing contrast to the light sea-green .carpet .of. moss from which they spring profusely.

A few swamp-maple saplings, witlirod bushes (viburnum), and mountain-ash, occur at intervals near the edge of the swamp, where the ground is drier, and offer a mouthful of browse to the moose, who, however, mostly frequenting these localities in the rutting season, seldom partake of food. Here, accompanied by his consort, the bull remains, if undisturbed, for weeks together ; and, if a large animal, will claim to be the monarch of t1 e swamp, crashing with his antlers against the tree stems should he hear a distant rival approaching, and making sudden mad rushes through the trees that can be heard at a long distance. At frequent intervals the moss is tom up in a large area, and the black mud scooped out by the bull pawing with the fore-foot-found these holes he continually resorts. The strong musky effluvia evolved by them is exceedingly offensive, and can be perceived at a considerable distance. They are examined with much curiosity by the Indian hunter (who is not over particular) to ascertain the time elapsed since the animal was last on the spot. A similar fact is noticed by Mr. Lloyd in the case of the European elk, “grop” being the Norse term applied to such cavities found in similar situations in the Scandinavian forest.

The rutting season commences early in September, the horns of the male being by that time matured and hardened. An Indian hunter has told me that he has called up a moose in the third week of August, and found the velvet still covering the immature horn ; however, the connexion between the cessation of further emission of horn matter from the system owing to strangulation of the ducts at the burr of the completed antler, with the advent of the sexual season,, is so well established as a fact in the natural history of the Cervinae that such an instance must be regarded as exceptional. The first two or three days of September over, and the moose has worked off the last ragged strip of the deciduous skin against his favourite rubbing-posts—the stems of young hacmatack (larch) and alder bushes, and with conscious pride of condition and strength, with clean hard antlers and massive neck, is ready to assert his claims against all rivals. A nobler animal does not exist in the American forest; nor, whatever may have been asserted about his ungainliness of gait and appearance, a form more entitled to command admiration, calculated, indeed, on first being confronted with the forest giant, to produce a feeling of awe on the part of the young hunter. To hear his distant crashings through the woods, now and then drawing his horns across the brittle branches of dead timber as if to intimidate the supposed rival, and to see the great black mass burst forth from the dense forest and stalk majestically towards you on the open barren, is one of the grandest sights that can be presented to a sportsman's eyes in any quarter of the globe. His coat now lies close, with a gloss reflecting the sun's rays like that of a well-groomed horse. His prevailing colour, if in his prime, is jet black, with beautiful golden-brown legs, and flanks pale fawn. The swell of the muscle surrounding the fore-arm is developed like the biceps of a prizefighter, and stands well out to the front. I have measured a fore-arm of a large moose over twenty inches in circumference. The neck is nearly as round as a barrel, and of immense thickness. The horns are of a light yellowish white stained with chestnut patches; the tines rather darker; and the base of the horn, with the lowest group of prongs projecting forwards, of a dark reddish brown.

At this season the bulls fight desperately. Backed by the immense and compact neck, the collision of the antlers of two large rivals is heard on a still autumnal night, like the report of a gun. If the season is young, the palm of the horn is often pierced by the tines of the adversary, and I have picked up broken fragments of tines where a fight has occurred. Though at other seasons they rarely utter a sound, where moose are plentiful they may be heard all day and night. The cows utter a prolonged and strangely-wild call, which is imitated by the Indian hunter through a trumpet of rolled-up birch-bark to allure the male. The. bull emits several sounds. Travelling through the woods in quest of a mate, he is constantly “talking,” as the Indians say, giving out a suppressed guttural sound—quoh ! quoh! —which becomes much sharper and more like a bellow when he hears a distant cow. Sometimes he bellows in rapid succession; but when approaching the neighbourhood of the forest where he has heard the call of the cow moose, and for which he makes a bee line at first, he becomes much more cautious, speaking more slowly, constantly stopping to listen, and often finally making a long noiseless detour of the neighbourhood, so as to come up from the windward, by which means he can readily detect the presence of lurking danger These latter cautious manoeuvres on the part of the moose are, however, more frequently exercised in districts where they are much hunted; in their less accessible retreats the old bulls will often rush up to the spot without hesitation. The suspicious and angry bull will often go into a thick swamp and lay about him amongst the spruce stems right and left, now and then making short rushes—the dead sticks flying before him with reports like pistol shots. I have often heard a strange sound produced by moose when “real mad,” as the Indians would say—a halfchoked sound as if there was a stoppage in the wind-pipe, which might be expressed—hud-jup, hud-jup ! When with his mate, his note is plaintive and coaxing—cooah, cooah!

A veteran hunter, now dead, well-known in Nova Scotia as Joe Cope—to be regretted as one of the last examples of a thorough Indian, and gifted with extraordinary faculties for the chase—thus described to me, over the camp-fire, one of his earlier reminiscences of the woods—the subject being a moose fight.

It was a bright night in October, and he was alone, calling, on an elevated ridge which overlooked a great extent of forest land. “I call,” said he, “and in all my life I never hear so many moose answer. Why, the place was bilin with moose. By-and-by I hear two coming just from opposite ways—proper big bulls I knew from the way they talked. They come right on, and both come on the little hill at same time—pretty hard place, too, to climb up, so full of rocks and windfalls. When they coming up the hill, I never hear moose make such a shockin’ noise, roarin’, and tearin’ with their horns. I just step behind some bushes, and lay down. They meet just at the top, and directly they seen one another, they went to it. Well, Capten, you wouldn’t b’lieve what a noise—just the same as if gun gone off. Well, they ripped away, till I couldn’t stand it no longer, and I shot one of the poor brutes; the other he didn’t seem to mind the gun one bit—no more noise than what he been making and he thought he killed the moose ; so I just loaded quick, and I shot him too. What fine moose them was—both layin' together on the rocks! No moose like them now-a-days, Capten.”

It is not long since that an animated controversy appeared in the columns of a sporting paper under the heading “Do stags roar?” It was decided, I believe, that such was the case with the red-deer of the Scottish hills, by the testimony of many sportsmen. I can testify that such is also a habit of the moose, and many will corroborate this statement. On two occasions in the fall I have heard the strange and, until acquainted with its origin, almost appalling sound emitted by the moose. It is a deep, hoarse, and prolonged bellow, more resembling a feline than a bovine roar. Once it occurred when a moose, hitherto boldly coming up at night to the Indians' call, had suddenly come on our tracks of the previous evening when on our way to the calling-ground. On the other occasion I fallowed a pair of moose for more than an hour, guided solely by the constantly repeated roarings of the bull, which I shot in the act.

Young moose of the second and third year are later in their season than the old bulls. Before the end of October, when their elders have retired, though they will generally readily answer the Indians' call from a distance, they show great caution in approaching—stealthily hovering round, seldom answering, and creeping along the edges of the barren or lake so as to get to leeward of the caller, making no crashing with their horns against the trees as do the older bulls, and always adopting the; moose-paths. In consequence they are seldom called up.

When the moose wishes to beat a retreat in silence, his suspicions being aroused, he can effect the same with marvellous stealth. Not a branch is heard to snap, and the horns are so carefully carried through the densest thickets that I believe a porcupine or a rabbit would make more noise when alarmed.

In the fall the bull moose, forgetting his hitherto cautious habits of moving through the forest, seems, on the contrary, bent on making himself heard, “sounding” (as the Indians term it) his horns against a tree with a peculiar metallic ring. Sometimes the ear of the hunter, intently listening for signs of advancing game, is assailed by a most tremendous clatter from some distant swamp or burnt-wood, “just (as my Indian once aptly expressed it) as if some one had taken and hove down a pile of old boards.” It is the moose, defiantly sweeping his forest of tines right and left amongst the brittle branches of the ram-pikes, as the scathed pines, hardened by fire, are locally termed. The resemblance of the sound of the bull when he'answers at a great distance off to the chopping of an axe is very distinct; and even the practised ear of the sharpest Indian is often exercised in long and’anxiously criticising the sound before he can make up his mind from which it emanates. There are of frequent occurrence, in districts frequented by these animals, what are termed moose-paths — well-defined lines of travel and of communication between their feeding grounds which, when seeking a new browsing country, or when pursued, they invariably make for and follow. These paths, which in some places are scarcely visible, at other times are broad enough to afford a good line of travel to a man; they are also used by bears and wild cats. Sometimes they connect the little mossy bogs which often run in chains through a low-lying evergreen forest; at others they traverse the woods round the edges of barrens, skirting lakes and swamps. I have often observed that moose, chased from a distance into a strange district, will at once and intuitively take to one of these moose-paths.

With the exception of the leaves and tendrils of the yellow pond lily (Nuphar advena), eaten when wallowing in the lakes in summer, and an occasional bite at a tus-sack of broad-leaved grass growing in dry bogs, the food of the moose is solely afforded by leaves and young terminal shoots of bushes. The following is a list of trees and shrubs from which I picked specimens, showing the browsing of moose, on returning to camp one winter’s afternoon. Eed maple, white birch, striped maple, swamp maple, balsam fir, poplar, witch hazel, mountain ash. The withrod is as often eaten, and apparently relished as a tonic bitter, as the mountain ash; but the young poplar growing up in recently burnt lands in small groves, with tender shoots, appears to form the most frequently sought item of diet. In winter young spruces are often eaten, as, also, is the silver fir; in the latter case the Indians say the animal is sick. The observant eye of the Indian hunter can generally tell in winter, should drifting snow cover up its tracks, the direction in which the moose has proceeded, feeding as he travels, by the appearance of the bitten boughs; as the incisors of the lower jaw cut into the bough, the muscular upper lip breaks it off from the opposite side, leaving a rough projection surmounting a clean-cut edge, by which the position of the passing animal is indicated. The wild meadow hay stacked by the settlers back in the woods is never touched by moose, though I have seen them eat hay when taken young and brought up in captivity. A young one in my possession would also graze on grass, which, vainly endeavouring to crop by widely straddling with the forelegs he would finally drop on his knees to eat, and thus would advance a step or two to reach further, and in a most ludicrous manner.

To get at the foliage out of reach of his mouffle the animal resorts to the practice of riding down young trees, as shown in the accompanying woodcut.

The teeth of the moose are arranged according to the dental formula of all ruminants, though I once saw a lower jaw containing nine perfect incisors. The crown of the molar is deeply cleft, and the edges of the enamel surrounding the cutting surfaces very sharp and hard as adamant—beautifully adapted to reduce the coarse sapless branches on which it is sometimes compelled to subsist in winter, when accumulated snows shut it out from seeking more favourable feeding grounds. I have often heard it asserted by Indian hunters that a large stone is to be found in the stomach of every moose. This, of course, is a fable ; but a few years since I was given a calculus from a mooses stomach which I had sawn in two. The concentric rings were well defined, and were composed of radiating crystals like needles. The nucleus was plainly a portion of a broken molar tooth which the animal had swallowed. A short time afterwards I obtained another bezoar taken from a moose. The rings were fewer in number than in the preceding case, but the nucleus was a very nearly perfect and entire molar.

MOOSE RIDING-DOWN A TREE.

The young bull moose grows his first horn (a little dag), of a cylindrical form, in his second summer, i.e., when one year old. Both these and the next year’s growth, which are bifurcate, remain on the head throughout the winter till April or May. The palmate horns of succeeding years are dropped earlier, in January or February—a new growth commencing in April. The full development of the horn appears to be attained when the animal is in its seventh year.*

As a means of judging age, no dependence is to be placed on the number of the tines, but more upon the colour and perfect appearance of the antler. In an old moose, past his prime, the horns have a bleached appearance, and the tines are not fully developed round the edge of the palm. It is my impression that when moose are much disturbed, and are not allowed to “breed” their horns in quiet, contorted and undersized horns most frequently occur. Double and even treble palms, folded back one layer upon the other, are not uncommon; and sometimes an almost entire absence of palmation occurs, in which case I have seen a pair of moose horns ascribed to the cariboo. Structural irregularity of the antler is frequently the result of constitutional injury. A friend in Nova Scotia, well known there as “the Old Hunter,” recently gave me a pair of horns of most singular appearance, the original possessor of which he had shot a few falls previous. They were of a dead-white colour, without palmation, and with immense and knotted burrs and long bony excrescences sprouting from the shafts of the antlers like stalactites. The horn matter, instead of flowing evenly over the surface, had been impeded in its course, and had burst out at the base of the horn. The animal, an unusually large and old bull, when shot showed evident signs of having been in the wars during the previous season. Several of his ribs were broken, and the carcass bore many other marks of injury. The very bones appeared affected by disease, and were dried up and marrowless.

Even when badly wounded, the moose is seldom known to attack a man unless too nearly approached. There are instances, however, recorded to the contrary. An old Indian, long since dead, called “ Old Joe Cope” (not the Joe previously mentioned), was for years nearly bent double by a severe beating received from the forefoot of a wounded moose which turned on him. For safety, there being no tree near, he jammed himself in between two large granite boulders which were near at hand. The aperture did not extend' far enough back to enable him to get altogether out of the reach of the infuriated bull.

Whatever may be said about the mild eyes of the dying moose, a wounded animal, unable to get away, assumes a very “ ugly ” expression. The little hazel eye and constricted muscles of the mouffle speak volumes of concentrated hate. Such scenes I have lost no time in terminating by a quick coup de grdce. When the moose faces the hunter, licking his lips, it is a caution to stand clear.

Portions of skeletons, the skulls united by firmly locked antlers, are not unfrequently found in the wilderness arena where a deadly fight has occurred, and the unfortunate animals have thus met a lingering and terrible death, to which may be applied the well-known lines of Byron in illustration—the contest, indeed, being prolonged beyond the original intention :—

“Friends meet to part: love laughs at faith;
True foes, once met, are joined till death !”

A splendid pair of locked horns of the American moose now adorn the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

In hot weather the moose appears much oppressed and lazy; he will scarcely stir, and a little exertion causes him to pant and the tongue to hang out. Cold weather, on the contrary, braces him up, and we always find that on a frosty night and morning in the fall of the year the moose is more inclined to travel and answer the hunters call than on a close night, though in the height of the season. The best time for calling is on a cold frosty morning just before sunrise, when a rime frost whitens the barrens, and the air holds a death-like stillness, the constant hooting of the cat-owls (Bubo Yirginianus) portending the approach of a storm.

Except in the height of the rutting season, the great ear of the moose is ever on the alert to detect danger ; the slightest snap of a dead bough trodden on by the advancing hunter, and he is off in a long swinging trot for many a mile. He readily perceives the difference of sounds occasioned by the presence of his human foe to those produced by the animals or birds of the forest, or by the approach of his own species. “The only way you can fool a moose" says my Indian, “is when the drops of rain are pattering off the trees on to the dead leaves; then he don’t know nothing.”

The presence of the moose is so difficult to detect, except by tracks and signs of browsing, that habitual silence and caution in walking through the forest becomes a leading trait in the moose hunter, whose eyes are ever glancing around through the forest. By observing this strictly, and from long habit, I shot my last moose unexpectedly. On our road to the calling ground, a picturesque little open bog of a hundred acres or so in the middle of a heavily-wooded evergreen forest, we had passed through a descending valley under tall hemlock woods on the soft mossy carpet which makes travelling easy and grateful to the moccasined foot. Not a word had been spoken save in cautious undertones, and debouching on the bog, we walked up to a little pile of rocks and dead trees near the centre, where we were to try our luck with the moose-call on the approach of evening, and quietly deposited our loads—blankets and camp-kettle. Lighting our pipes, we sat still for a few moments, scanning the edges of the woods. It was perfectly calm ; not a sound except the cry of the jay or the woodpecker’s tap. Presently the Indian, who lay in the bushes close by, gave a little warning “hist;” and, looking up, I saw a fine moose standing about eighty yards off, and slowly looking about him. He had come out of the woods close to our point of exit, and we must have been passed by him quite handy. I was capped; and in a few minutes crowds of moose-birds had assembled to share the hunter’s feast. But for our caution we should never have seen or heard him.

In November, the rutting season over, the bull moose again seeks the water and recovers his appetite : remaining, nevertheless, in poor condition throughout the winter. He may be now seen standing listless and motionless for hours together, and seeming to take but little notice of the approach of danger unless his nostrils are invaded by the scent of a human being, which will start a moose under any circumstances. About this time the cows, young bulls, and calves congregate in small parties of three to half a dozen, and affect open barrens and hill sides, where there is a plentiful supply of young wood of deciduous trees, constituting what is termed a “moose-yard.” If undisturbed they will remain on such spots, feeding round in an area more or less limited in extent, for several weeks; when, the supply of provender failing, they break up camp and proceed in search of fresh ground. When the weather and state of the snow permits, these shifts are practised throughout the winter. In Canada, however, and in Northern New Brunswick, the moose is a far less migratory animal than he is in Nova Scotia, owing to the great depth of the snow; once he chooses his yard he has to remain in it, and is quite at the mercy of the hunter who may have discovered the locality, and who can invade his domains at any time and at his own convenience. The old bulls become very solitary in their habits, and, indeed, seem to avoid the society of their species, living in the roughest and most inaccessible districts, on hill sides strewn in the wildest confusion with bleached granite boulders, and windfalls where some forest fire has passed over and left the land thus desolate.

In severe snow-storms the moose seeks shelter from the blinding drift (poudre) in fir thickets. In the yard, the animal spends the day in alternately lying down for periods of about two hours, and rising to browse on the bushes near at hand. About ten o’clock in the morning, and again in the afternoon, they may generally be found feeding, or standing, chewing the cud, with their heads listlessly drooping. At noon they always lie down ; and the Indian hunter knows well that this is the worst time of day to approach a yard, as the animal is then keenly watching, with its wonderful faculties of scent and hearing on the alert, for the faintest taint or sound in the air which would intimate coming danger. I have waited motionless for an hour at a time, knowing the herd was reposing close at hand, and anxiously expecting a little wind to stir the branches so as to cover my advance, which would otherwise be quite futile. The snapping of a little twig, or the least collision of the rifle with a branch in passing, or the crunching of the snow under the moccasin, though you planted your footsteps with the most deliberate caution, would suffice to start them.

The moose is not easily alarmed, however, by distant sounds, nor does he take notice of dogs barking, the screams of geese, or the choppings of an axe—sounds, emanating from some settler’s farm, which are borne through the air on a clear frosty morning to an astonishing distance in America. Indeed, I once was lying in the bushes in full view of a magnificent bull when the cars passed on a provincial railway at a distance of four or five miles, and the deep discordant howl of the American engine-whistle, or rather trumpet, woke echoes from the hill-sides far and near. Once or twice he raised his ears and slowly turned his head to the sound, and then quietly and meditatively resumed the process of rumination.

In April, about the time of the sap ascending in trees, the moose horns begin to sprout, the old pair having fallen two months previously. The latest date that I have ever seen a bull wearing both horns was on the 29th of January. The cylindrical dag of the moose in his second year, and the two-pronged and still impalmate horn of the next season are, however, retained till April. In the middle of this month the coat is shed, and for some time the moose presents a very rugged appearance. Towards the end of May the cow drops one or two calves (rarely three), by the margin of a lake, often on one of the densely-wooded islands, where they are more secure from the attacks of the black bear or of the bull moose themselves. It has been affirmed as one of the distinctive traits of the Arctic deer that the fawns are not spotted. Though faint, there are decided dapples on the sides and flanks of the young moose; in the cariboo they are quite conspicuous. In May the plague of flies commences, driving the more migratory cariboo to the mountains and elevated lands, and inducing the moose to pass much of his time in the lakes, where they may be frequently seen browsing on water-lilies near the shore, or swimming from point to point. Besides the clouds of mosquitoes and black flies (Simulium molestum) which swarm round everything that moves in the woods, there are too large Tabani, or breeze flies, that are always about moose, a grey speckled fly, and one with yellow bands. The former is locally termed moose-fly, and is very troublesome to the traveller in the woods in summer, alighting on an exposed part, and quickly delivering a sharp painful thrust with its lance-like proboscis. A tick (Ixodes) affects the moose, especially in winter and early spring. The animal strives to free itself from their irritation by striding over bushes and brambles. The ticks may often be seen on the beds in the snow where moose have lain down, and whence they are quickly picked up by the ever-attendant moose birds, or Canada jays (Corvus canadensis). These vermin will fasten on the hunter when backing his meat out of the woods. The Indian says: “Bite all same as a piece of fire.”

So many are the Indian tales illustrating the supposed power that the moose possesses of being able to hide himself from his pursuers by a complete and long-sustained submergence below the surface of the water, that one is almost inclined to believe that the animal is gifted with an unusual faculty of retaining the breath. I know that moose will feed upon the tendrils and roots of the yellow pond lily by reaching for them under water. An instance occurring in the same district in Nova Scotia that I was hunting in, and at the same time, which was related to me, will serve as a sample of the oft-repeated stories bearing on this point. We had crossed a fresh moose track of that morning’s date on proceeding to our hunting grounds on the Cumberland hills in search of cariboo. Not caring to kill moose we left it; but shortly after the track was taken up and followed on light new-fallen snow by a settler. Having started the animal once or twice without getting a shot, he followed its track to the edge of a little round pond in the woods whence he could not find an exit of the trail. Sitting down to smoke his pipe before giving it up to return, his gun left against a tree at some distance, he was astonished to see the animal’s head appear above the surface in the middle of the pond. On jumping up, the moose quickly made for the opposite shore, and, emerging from the water, regained the shelter of the forest ere he could get round in time for a shot. The Indians have a tradition that the moose originally came from the sea, and that in times of great persecution, some half-century since, when no moose tracks could be found in the Nova Scotian woods, they resorted to the salt water, and left for other lands. An old hunter, now dead, told me he was present when his father shot the first moose that had been seen since their return; that great were the rejoicings of the Indians on the occasion, and that two were shot on the beach by a settler who had seen them swimming for shore from open water in the Bay of Fundy. I can vouch for an instance of a moose, when hunted, taking to the sea and swimming off to an island considerably over a mile from the mainland. Such tales are evidently intimately connected with the powers of the animal in the water, in which, as has been previously stated, it passes much of its existence during the hot weather. A similar hunter’s story to the one related above is quoted by Mr. Gosse in the “Canadian Naturalist.”

In conclusion, it is with regret that the conviction must be expressed that this noble quadruped, at no very distant period, is destined to pass away from the list of the existing mammalia. The animal has fulfilled its mission ; it has afforded food and clothing to the primitive races who hunted the all-pervading fir forests of Central Europe and Asia to subarctic latitudes, whilst, until very recently, its flesh, with that of the cariboo, formed the sole subsistence of the Micmacs and other tribes living in the eastern woodlands of North America. To these the beef of civilisation—wenju-teeamwee, or French moose-meat, as the Indian calls it—but ill and scantily supplies the place of their once abundant venison. It has enabled the early and adventurous settler to push back from the coast and open up new clearings in the depths of the forest. With a barrel of flour and a little tea, rafted up the lakes or drawn on sleds over the snow to his rude log hut, he was satisfied to leave the rest to the providence of nature ; and the moose, the salmon, and the trout, with the annual prolific harvest of wild berries, contributed amply to the few wants of the fathers of many a rising settlement. With but few and exceptional instances, the moose or the elk has not become subservient to man as a beast of burden as has the reindeer; neither is it, like the latter, still called upon to afford subsistence to nomade tribes of savages who live entirely apart from civilisation. Being an inhabitant of more temperate regions, it is brought more constantly within the influences of the permanent neighbourhood of man, and thus, whilst its extinction is threatened by slaughter, a sure but certain alteration is being effected in the physical features of its native forest regions. The often purposeless destruction of woods by the axe, and the constant devastation of large areas of forest by fires, too frequently the result of carelessness, are reducing the moisture of the American wilderness, removing the sponge-like carpet of mosses by which the water was retained, and rendering the latter a less fitting abode for the moose. Destruction of his domains and constant disturbance are undoubtedly slowly dwarfing the species. We no longer hear of examples of the monster moose of the old times of which Indian tradition still speaks, and when the well-authenticated diminution in the size of the red deer of the Scottish hills is remembered, an appearance of less exaggeration than is usually attributed to them marks the tales of the early American voyageurs concerning the moose.

When the Russian aurochs and the musk-sheep of Arctic America shall have disappeared, it is to be feared that Cervus Alces of the Old and New Worlds, his fir forests levelled, his favourite swamps drained, and unable to exist continuously in the broad glare and radiation of a barren country, will follow, to be regretted as one of the noblest and most important mammals of a past age; his bones will be dug from peat-bogs by a future generation of naturalists, and prized as are now those of the Great Auk of the islands of the North Atlantic, or of the Struthiones of New Zealand, which have perished within the ken of the scientific record of modern natural history.