208 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1897. 



Potter, Tioga and Lycoming Counties. The latter named regions 

 formed the hunting grounds of my veteran friend, Seth I. Nelson, 

 whose diary between 1831 and 1837 shows that he killed 22 elk 

 during the period. Six of these were killed in 1833. The horns of 

 one of these were so large that Mr. Nelson, who is about 5 ft. 2 in. 

 high, told me he conld stand erect beneath the skull when the head 

 was inverted with the antler tips touching the floor. Mr. Nelson 

 stated that one of the last elk known to have been killed in that 

 region was secured on Bennett's Branch in Elk County by a party 

 of Cornplanter Indians about 1865. A hunter named AVilson 

 Morrison brought the carcass of an elk about that time to Lock 

 Haven, claiming that he killed it. But it was afterward understood 

 that he had paid $25. for it to the Indians." 



The range of the elk and buffalo into the south central counties of 

 Pennsylvania, east of Fulton County, is very improbable, if, indeed, 

 they ever wandered that far. The main line of their eastern range 

 on Mason and Dixon's line was probably along the valley of Castle- 

 man's River in Somerset County and the main ridge of the Alle- 

 gheny mountain near that place, which formed a continuous trail of 

 safety between their haunts in West Virginia and the Keystone 

 State. North of this region their range probably spread northeast- 

 ward as far south as the Juniata valley, but by far the largest 

 n limber did not come south of the east and west branches of the 

 Susquehanna. The presence of an Elk Mills and Elk Creek in 

 Chester Countv. and of an Elkton in Cecil Count v, Maryland, would 

 indicate their former presence in that vicinity, probably only as 

 stragglers along the Susquehanna valley. 



The only specimen of Pennsylvania elk known to me is an adult 

 male in the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 

 delphia. It was shot by a white hunter in 1853, in McKean County, 

 and was purchased for the Academy by a club of members. 



4. Dorcelaphus americanus (Erxl.). Virginia Deer. 



With the probable exception of York and Adams Counties, there 

 is not a county in central Pennsylvania, between latitudes 79° 30' 



"Since the above was in type Mr. Nelson sends me a clipping from the 

 Utica Saturday Globe giving a detailed account of the discovery of a bull elk 

 by himself and Ira Parmenter on the headwaters of Bennett's Branch in 

 1*867. A veteran Indian hunter of the Cattaraugus Reservation, named Jim 

 Jacobs, trailed this elk simultaneously with Wilson and Parmenter into the 

 headwaters of Clarion river, where the Indian, by superior cunning, made a 

 circuit and killed the game in a laurel thicket before the white hunters 

 arrived. Mr. Nelson writes me that this account is correct. 



