ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALIA IN EUROPE. 227 
never killed in a season, while in 1838 Della Marmora saw 
more than 100 in a single herd. 
The preservation of the various species of deer depends 
upon the protection of man. These animals commit sacrilege 
in forests and cultivated districts ; and except in the marshes 
and moorland wastes, where the value of the trees and shrubs 
is insignificant, they are out of place. It is interesting to 
learn that the largest living deer, the Elk (Cervus alces), is 
gradually extending its range of distribution in some parts of 
Europe. In Russia, Herr C. Grevé of Moscow has given a 
most elaborate account of its habitat, but it is too exhaustive 
and too minute to be detailed here. In order to comprehend 
it thoroughly, one would require an intimate knowledge of the 
political and physical geography of the vast Russian Empire, 
and this the best informed among us would hardly venture 
to profess.** 
Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century this 
species seems to have left its chief strongholds in Central 
Russia, and to have made a migratory movement towards 
the South, with the result that it is now to be found in 
certain Governments in which it was formerly unknown. 
Some idea of its abundance at the present time may be got 
from the fact that the Zoological Gardens at Moscow have 
within recent years regularly exhibited specimens which had, 
when hunted, fled for refuge within the precincts of that 
huge city, surrounded as it is by large and noisy manufac- 
turing suburbs.t 
The southern limit of the elks distribution in Europe can- 
not be exactly determined, but it may be approximately stated 
as about 50° N. lat. It does not occur, as Middendorf and 
others have supposed, in the Caucasus or in the valley of the 
Terek, nor have even its remains been discovered in that 
remote corner of European Russia. { Northwards in isolated 
“Those who are specially interested in this subject ought to study M. 
Greveé’s articles in Der Zoologische Garten, 1898 :— ‘* Die Geographische Ver- 
breitung des Elens einst und jetzt,” pp. 300 and 329, 
+ The population of Moscow was given last census at nearly a million. 
t Middendorf seems to have been misled by the report of an unscientific 
English traveller named Clarke, who mistook Saiga antelopes for young elks. 
It may also be mentioned en passant that Khamtschatka and the island of 
Saghalien are occasionally given by ill-informed writers as being inhabited by 
this animal. In both cases confusion with the reindeer must have taken place. 
