By MADISON GRANT. 



THE Scandinavian elk, which is closely related to the American moose, was 

 known to classical antiquity as a strange and ungainly beast of the far north ; 

 especially as an inhabitant of the great Teutoborgian Forest, which spread 

 across Germany from the Rhine to the Danube. The half mythical character which 

 has always clung to this animal is well illustrated in the following quotation from 

 Pliny's Natural History, Book 8, chapter i6: 



"There is also the achlis, which is produced in the island of Scandinavia. It has 

 never been seen in this c'ty, although we have had descriptions of it from many 

 persons; it is not unlike the elk but has no joints in the hind leg. Hence it never 

 lies down, but reclines against a tree while it sleeps ; it can only be taken by pre- 

 viously cutting into the tree, and thus laying a trap for it, as, otherwise, it would 

 escape through its swiftness. Its upper lip is so extremely large, for which reason 

 it is obliged to go backwards when grazing; otherwise by moving onwards, the lip 

 would get doubled up." 



The elk and Pliny's achlis are evidently the same animal. Absurd as this 

 description is, similar tales appear in modern natural histories about the habits of 

 other animals, as little known as was the elk in Pliny's time. The age of child- 

 like credulity in matters pertaining to zoology, which began long before Pliny, 

 did not end with the nineteenth century. The tales told by hunters and trappers 

 around the campfire to-day show as fervid an imagination and as na'i've a disregard 

 for facts. 



The strange stiffness of joint and general ungainliness of the elk, however, were 

 matters of such general observation as to apparently have become embodied in the 

 German name eland, sufferer. Curiously enough this name eland was taken by the 

 Dutch to South Africa, and there applied to the largest and handsomest of the 

 bovine antelopes, Greets canna. 



In mediseval times there are many references in hunting tales to the elk, notably 

 in the passage in the Nibelungen Lied describing Siegfried's great hunt on the upper 

 Rhine, in which he killed an elk. Among the animals slain by the hero is the 



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