American Big Game in its Haunts 



Like American deer it has the lower ends of the 

 lateral metacarpals remaining, and the antlers are 

 without a brow-tine, but like Cervus it has an in- 

 complete vomer, and unlike deer in general, the 

 antlers are set laterally on the frontal bone, instead 

 of more or less vertically, and the nasal bones are 

 excessively short. The animal of northern Europe 

 and Asia is usually considered to be distinct from 

 the American, and lately the Alaskan moose has 

 been christened Jlces gigas, marked by greater 

 size, relatively more massive skull, and huge 

 antlers. Of the antecedents of Alces, as in the case 

 of the reindeer, we are ignorant. The earlier Pleis- 

 tocene of Europe has yielded nearly related fos- 

 sils,* and a peculiar and probably rather later form 

 comes from New Jersey and Kentucky. This last 

 in some respects suggests a resemblance to the 

 wapiti, but it is unlikely that the similarity is more 

 than superficial, and as moose not distinguishable 

 from the existing species are found in the same 

 formation, it is improbable that Cervalces bore to 

 Alces anything more than a collateral relationship. 



Even to an uncritical eye, the differences between 

 ungulates and carnivores of to-day are many and 



* The huge fossil known as "Irish elk" is really a fallow 

 deer and in no way nearly related to the moose. 



88 



