The Moose. 215 



lakes of large size ; but it is of course easily slain if dis- 

 covered by canoe-men while in the water. It travels well 

 through bogs, but not as well as the caribou ; and it will 

 not venture on ice at all if it can possibly avoid it. 



After the rut begins the animals roam everywhere 

 throuQ^h the woods ; and where there are hardwood forests 

 the winter-yard is usually made among them, on high 

 ground, away from the swamps. In the mountains the 

 deep snows drive the moose, like all other game, down 

 to the lower valleys, in hard winters. In the summer it 

 occasionally climbs to the very summits of the wooded 

 ranges, to escape the flies ; and it is said that in certain 

 places where wolves are plenty the cows retire to the tops 

 of the mountains to calve. More often, however, they 

 select some patch of very dense cover, in a swamp or by 

 a lake, for this purpose. Their ways of life of course 

 vary with the nature of the country they frequent. In 

 the towering chains of the Rockies, clad in sombre and 

 unbroken eversfreen forests, their habits, in reo^ard to 

 winter- and summer-homes, and choice of places of seclu- 

 sion for cows with young calves and bulls growing their 

 antlers, differ from those of their kind which haunt the 

 comparatively low, hilly, lake-studded country of Maine 

 and Nova Scotia, where the forests are of birch, beech, 

 and maple, mixed with the pine, spruce, and hemlock. 



The moose being usually monogamous is never found 

 in great herds like the wapiti and caribou. Occasionally 

 a troop of fifteen or twenty individuals may be seen, but 

 this is rare ; more often it is found singly, in pairs, or in 

 family parties, composed of a bull, a cow, and two or 



