Moose 183 



found it is cause for much rejoicing among the Indians. It 

 is carefully preserved as great medicine, and the man who 

 found it, is believed to have secured a mascot of eternal good 

 luck in Moose hunting. 



Cross examination did not shake his evidence. It was 

 not a foetus — Tweedell was sure of that. It was in the skin, 

 and usually in that of a bull Moose. He had seen two; the 

 most recent one was about a foot long; it had hoofs and hair, 

 but no bones. Also he had seen the same sort of thing among 

 Rabbits. 



The explanation of the mystery is not far to seek. It is 

 well known in surgery that within the skin may be formed a 

 pocket in which are developed skin, hair, teeth, nails, or any 

 other product of the skin. These are known as dermoid 

 cysts. They have no established relation to age, sex, or bodily 

 locality. They are best known in the human species, because 

 they have been most looked for there. Yet here, evidently, was 

 a case of dermoid cyst in the Moose observed by a reliable and 

 educated man. 



Dr. Gordon Bell, of Winnipeg, explains such develop- 

 ments as *' foetus in foeto.''* Of this I met with a strange case 

 at Meeker, Col., October 4, 1901. Dr. J. W. ColUns, the 

 veterinary, showed me a foetus of apparently three months* 

 development that had been aborted the night before by a 

 fifteen-month filly that was still sucking her dam. We 

 examined the case together; there was no possibility, he said, 

 of a male parent being concerned. 



Thomas Hutchins mentions" that the buck Caribou has 

 in the lower part of the neck a peculiar "cyst or bladder about 

 the bigness of a half-crown piece, full of fine flaxen hair neatly 

 coiled round to the thickness of almost an inch." This cyst 

 has not been observed by other naturalists, but E. W. Darbey 

 has secured for me a similar one from the throat of a bull 

 Moose. It measured about i\ inches by if inches, and was 

 situated half-way between jaw and chest on the middle line of 



^' Thos. Hutchins's MSS. Now in Archives of Hudson's Bay Co. 



