A Morning Among Moose. L05 



cent anim.il with widespreading antlers and a height at the shoulders 

 of at least seven feet. His stout limbs of a pale ochre colour, like the 

 trunks of young trees, his sides deep brown, like faded foliage in 

 shadow, his head and back much paler and glistening as if frosted, 

 resembling a mass of leaves with the light glancing across them. We 

 were able to view at eight or ten yards distance this kingly quadruped, 

 always remembering the precaution to keep within reach of a stout 

 cedar or beech. There was no difficulty in noting the peculiar features 

 of the living moose so utterly unlike the crude and unshapely stuffed 

 skins which we usually see. The short deep body, the monstrous 

 towering shoulders surmounted by a bushy erect mane, the thick 

 abbreviated neck, the long and ponderous head, and, above all, the 

 gracefully curved snout, with pendulous upper lip, almost as mobile as 

 the elephant's trunk, all combined to give a peculiar weird grandeur to 

 the animal. It is impossible in a museum specimen to produce certain 

 graceful features in this uncou'.h giant. Thus the soft roundness ot 

 the ears is always lost, and the elegant curve of the slit-hke nostrils it is 

 impossible to preserve after death The strange, somewhat " lack 

 lustre " eye, to adopt Shakespeare's expression, is ludicrously small tor 

 so large a creature. It is, it must be admitted, a wicked eye. very un- 

 like the large liquid eye in most of the deer tribe, nor has it the 

 benignant intelligence of that organ which we see in the elephant, or 

 the inoffensive inquiring look of the whale's eye. as viewed at half a 

 dozen yards' distance from a fishing boat : but it resembles rather the 

 suspicious ill-natured eye of the bull or the rhinoceros. The eye in 

 iact is dull, dark, and with hardly any indication of white. loom the 

 thioatof the bull hung the elegant tail like "bell," a bushy append: 

 which leaches its full development only when the creature is adult. 

 The huge trumpet-like ears are extremely bushy, similar to the condi- 

 tion of the brown bear, and as mobile and rapid in movement as the 

 ears of a horse. 



The living moose combines many of the general features of the 

 horse, the deer, and.the pig. Indeed the young calf-moose is strik- 

 ingly pig-like in appearance, on account of the long snout, the large 

 pointed ears, small eyes and sloping back. 



