THE DEER— ELKS. 



519 



straight. The color is a rather uniform reddish 

 brown, deepening into a brilliant black-brown on the 

 crest of the neck and sides of the head, and fading 

 into gray at the extremity of the snout; the legs are 

 whitish ashy-gray, the rings around the eyes gray. 

 The doe is of slightly smaller proportions, but has 

 no antlers. 

 The Domicile, Hub- Tlle Elk delights in wild, lonely 



its and Diet of forests, abounding in grassy swamps 

 the Elk. anc j inaccessible marshes, especially 



those grown with willows, birches, aspens and other 

 thickly leaved woods. Bogs and marshes seem to 

 be essential to its well-being and comfort. The 

 awkward, stupid-looking creature confines itself to 

 the lower, watery situa- 

 tions in summer, and in 

 winter to the higher ones, 

 which are not exposed to 

 inundations and are not 

 covered with ice. In se- 

 rene weather it prefers 

 forests of ordinary leaved 

 trees; in rain, snow and 

 fog, thick growths of trees 

 with needle- like foliage, 

 such as pines and firs. It 

 readily changes its place 

 of abode if disturbed or 

 urged by want of food. 



In its habits the Elk 

 differs from the ordinary 

 Deer in many respects. 

 Like the latter it gathers 

 into troops of variable 

 numbers and it is only 

 towards the time that the 

 young are born that the 

 old males separate from 

 these herds and consort 

 in societies of their own. 



The Elk dislikes being 

 disturbed in any way, 

 even more than do other 

 Deer. It requires abso- 

 lute freedom from moles- 

 tation and forsakes the 

 locality in which it has 

 been annoyed. Wherever 

 it knows that it is secure, 

 it rests only in the morn- 

 ing and afternoon hours, 

 except, perhaps, a few 

 short intervals, and roams 

 about in quest of its food 

 from four o'clock in the 

 afternoon, and during the 



early night and early morning; under different cir- 

 cumstances it sometimes chooses the night for its 

 search for food. The Elk's principal diet in the 

 forest uplands consists of leaves and shoots of the 

 swamp-willow, birch, ash, aspen, mountain ash, ma- 

 ple, linden, oak and pine; on the heath of young 

 reeds and sedge, supplemented with sprouting corn 

 and flax. When taking its food from the tree it 

 drives its incisor teeth in like a chisel, peels a piece 

 of bark a little distance, seizes the loosened end 

 with its teeth and lips and then tears long strips off 

 in an upward direction. Trees of medium growth it 

 bends down with its head and breaks off their tops; 

 as is easily explained, it prefers trees and shrubs, 

 the bark of which contains a large amount of sap, 



such as the aspen, ash, willow and poplar, some- 

 times completely stripping very stout aspen trees. 

 Peculiar Modes of The movements of the Elk are much 



Locomotion of less uniform and lighter than those 

 the Elk. f the Stags or Red Deer. It is not 



possessed of great powers of endurance, but is capa- 

 ble of trotting along rather rapidly for a long time; 

 some authorities aver that it can at this gait travel 

 thirty miles a day. 



Wangenheim describes a very queer mode of loco- 

 motion of the Elks over swampy districts. Where 

 the soil will not bear a running Elk, the animal 

 crouches down on its body, flexing the strong ten- 

 dons of its hind legs; then it stretches out its fore- 



THE MOOSE. The Moose of North America and the Elk oi Europe and Asia are so nearly related that 



they can scarcely be regarded as more than varieties of the same species. The Moose shows slight variations in 

 horns and fur from the Elk, and is restricted in its habitat to British America, and is most plentiful in the northern 

 forests of that region. (Alces americana or malchis.) 



legs, hooks its hoofs on some point of resistance, 

 such as a grass tuft or partly submerged log or 

 branch, pushes with its hind legs and pulls with its 

 fore feet, and thus glides over the muddy surface; 

 where the ground is quite quaky, it sometimes lies 

 down on its side and works its way along by kicking 

 and beating the mud with its legs. In the art of 

 swimming the Elk is an adept. It enters the water 

 not only from necessity, but, like many of the bovine 

 species, for its own comfort and pleasure, to bathe 

 and cool itself. In eastern Siberia it seeks the deeper 

 gorges in the mountains, in which the snow lies for 

 a long time, and there wallows in the cooling ele- 

 ment. It can not long proceed on smooth ice, un- 

 covered by snow, and if it once falls on the slippery 



