82 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
‘horses arrive at; but then, with this length of legs, its neck was 
remarkably short, no more than twelve inches; so that, by strad- 
dling with one foot forward and the other backward, it grazed on 
the plain ground, with the greatest difficulty, between its legs; the 
ears were vast and lopping, and as long as the neck ; the head was 
about twenty inches long, and ass-like ; and had such a redundancy 
of upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, 
travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is 
very reasonable to suppose that this creature supports itself chiefly 
by browsing of trees, and by wading after water plants ; towards 
which way of livelihood the length of legs and great lip must con- 
tribute much. I have read somewhere that it delights in eating 
the zyphea, or water-lily. From the fore-fect to the belly behind 
the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches: the length of 
the legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the /zéza, which 
was strangely long; but, in my haste to get out of the stench, I 
forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about 
an inch long ; the colour was a grizzly black; the mane about four 
inches long ; the fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, the hind flat 
and splayed. The spring before it was only two years old, so that 
most probably it was not then come to its growth. What a vast 
tall beast must a full-grown stagbe! I have been told some arrive 
at ten feet and an half! This poor creature had at first a female 
companion of the same species, which died the spring before. In 
the same garden was a young stag, or red deer, between whom and 
this moose it was hoped that there might have been a breed ; but 
their inequality of height must have always been a bar to any com- 
merce of the amorous kind. I should have been glad to have 
examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, &c. minutely; but the 
putrefaction precluded all farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper 
told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the:extreme frostvof the 
former winter. In the house they showed me the horn of a male 
moose, which had no front antlers, but only a broad palm with some 
snags on the edge. The noble owner of the dead moose proposed 
to make a skeleton of her bones. 
Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with that 
you saw ; and whether you think still that the American moose and 
European elk are the same creature.* 
I am, with the greatest esteem, &c. 
* The American moose, cervus alces, Linnzus ; and, I believe, the alces Americanus 
of modern zoologists, ‘‘is,” writes Major Hamilton Smith, ‘“‘an inhabitant of northern 
