84 The TVapitc, — Canadian Stag, 



layer of decomposing Ictvves or moss, that everywhere in the woods forms th(J 

 iurface. "While excavating the Ridcau Canal about twenty-five years since 

 the perfect skeleton of a Wapite was exliunied at the Hogs-back, near the 

 ■ite of the present City of Ottawa. The horns were attached to the skulls 

 and five feet long. Three years since the skeleton of a large deer was dia- 

 covered in the County of Lanark, which was probably of this ppecies. 



The Wapite is still somewhat abundant in the Western praries. Id 

 the paper from which our engraving of the animal is taken. Professor Baird 

 gays : — "The American Elk, sometimes called AVapite, was once extensively 

 distributed throughout the present limits of the United States. At the 

 present time, in the eastern parts, it is only found in a few counties of Penn- 

 gylvania — as Elk and Clearfield — where, indeed, their numbers are decreas- 

 ing day by day. Occasionally one has been seen in the Moose range of the 

 Adirondacks, in Lewis, Hamilton, and some other counties of northern New 

 York. This has not been the case, however, for more than twenty years. — 

 A few are known to exist in the Allcghanics of Western Virginia. We 

 next find them in the Southern part of Michigan, but it is only as we proceed 

 farther V^^est, that they present themselves in numbers. In Minnesota they 

 are found in large herds, and in still larger en the Upper Missouri, Tellow- 

 etone, and other streams. Of the vast number in these regions, seme idea 

 may be formed from the piles of shed horns which the Indians are in the 

 habit of heaping up in the prairies. One of these, on Elk Horn prairie, about 

 eighty miles above Fort Laiiou, has for many years been a conspicuous 

 land-mark to the traveller, shov.'ing like a white monument many miles off* 

 This which was torn down in the summer of 1850 was about fifteen feet 

 high and twenty-five in circumference ; others still larger are found on the 

 Upper Yellowstone." 



In the Western prairies they congregate in herds of from twenty or 

 thirty to six or seven hundred, and it is said that in those vast oceans of 

 meadow the animal grows to a great size. Individuals nearly the size of a 

 horse are not unfrequcnt. In California and New Mexico antlers, it is said, 

 have been found so large that when resting on their tips a tall man could 

 walk erect between them. Their food consists of the grass found in the 

 woods, wild pea vines, the branches of willows, lichens, and the buds of the 

 wild rose. Daring the winter they scrape the snow from the ground with the 

 fore feet and cat the tender roots and bark of shrubs and small trees. They 

 are fond of residing in wooded dells, islands covered with willows, or points 

 on the river side, still clothed with forest. They make for themselves a bed 

 upon the long grass, and occasionally upon the top of a fallen tree, where 

 they sleep during the hot sultry hours of the day. During hot weather when 

 mosquitoes abound in the woods, they retire to ponds or proceed to the rivers 

 and immerse their bodies and heads, leaving merely enough of their noeea 

 above the water to allow them to breathe. A pair of them kept in confine- 

 ment at New York by Mr. Audubon, were fed upon green cats, hay, Indian 

 corn, and all such food as is usually given to a cow. Turnips they would 



