TI)^ Wapiti (Ce7'VMS canadensis). 



By W. a. WADSWORTH. 



HERE is no animal left on earth that compares 

 in majesty and beauty with the American 

 stag, which I shall speak of as the elk " because 

 every one else does it " (an excuse for wrong- 

 doing since the beginning of sin), and if he can 

 be successfully introduced into the Adiron- 

 dacks he will be the greatest addition that can be 

 made to their attractiveness. He is really most at 

 home among the grassy slopes and forest glades of 

 the real mountains, and may hardly take kindly to 

 the rolling, thickly timbered country of which our 

 State forest is principally composed. He wants open 

 spaces over which he can roam, and succulent grasses on 

 which he can feed, and the leaves, sprouts, marsh growths 

 and lily pads, so loved by the moose and deer, are not natural 

 to him. 



It is true they were found all along the Alleghanies from 

 Virginia upward, and the hat rack in our house in the Genesee 

 Valley is made of elk antlers killed there some sixty years ago. 

 But Western New York contained more glades and open spaces in its forests, 

 and the underbrush was less dense than in the North Woods. They are all gone 

 now, not only from our own State, but from all the vast expanse between there 

 and the Rocky Mountains, and the great droves of thousands which many living 

 men have seen, have been so broken up that elk practically exist in any quantity 

 only at the Yellowstone Park, where they are preserved by the National Govern- 

 ment but slaughtered whenever they get outside of its limits, which do not extend 

 far enough to the southward to fully take in their winter range. 



There is a gretit local pretense that they are killed off by " Eastern dudes," 

 " Toorsts, " Indians," etc. ; but the majority are taken late in the season by men 



who go into the mountains for " meat " for winter use, and by pot hunters wanting 



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