182 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1885. 



Wistar did not name the species here described ; this was done 

 in 1825 by Harlan, in his Fauna Americana, who called it Cervus 

 americanus. The only addition of importance to our knowledge 

 of this species we owe to Dr. Leidy, who, in his "Ancient Mam- 

 malian Fauna of Dakota and Nebraska," p. 379, describes a pair 

 of metacarpals accompanying the head described by Wistar, 

 which Leidy says indicate an animal of greater stature, but more 

 graceful proportions, than the great Irish Deer. 



When Harlan named the species, the genera Cervus and Alces 

 had not been separated ; their later separation gave rise to a great 

 confusion of nomenclature. In 1835 Sir William Jardine (Natu- 

 ralists' Library, vol. xxi, p. 125), elevated Alces into a distinct 

 genus, and called the American species A. americanus. Jardine 

 supposed that Harlan's species was a true Cervus, and refers to 

 it as the " fossil cranium and horns of a stag, ... to which 

 Dr. Harlan has applied the name of G. americanus," (p. 162). In 

 1836 Ogilby named the European elk Alces machlis (P. Z. S., 

 1836, p. 135), the name now generally employed for both varie- 

 ties, while Harlan's name for the species described by Wistar has 

 never been disturbed or questioned. But judging from Wistar's 

 specimen, it becomes at once evident that this species is altogether 

 different from Cervus, and belongs either to Alces or some closely 

 allied genus. If it is to be classed in Alces, its specific name 

 must be A. americanus, which name has been used by Jardine for 

 the American moose. It will thus be seen that a serious confu- 

 sion of names has arisen. 



No other American fossil moose has received a special name, 

 though many specimens have been found, some of the finest of 

 which were in the Museum of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, 

 and were destined in the great fire of 187 1. 1 



Through the kindness of the Rev. A. A. Haines, the Museum 

 at Princeton has received an almost complete skeleton of a very 

 large extinct species of elk or moose, which was discovered in a 

 shell-marl deposit under a bog at Mt. Hermon, New Jersey, six 

 miles from Delaware Station on the Delaware, Lackawanna and 

 Western Railroad. This superb specimen is practically complete, 

 the only missing bones being five caudal vertebras; two ribs; the 

 right scapula and humerus ; the right unciform and pisiform, and 



See Judge Caton's Antelope and Deer of America, p. 194. 



