THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ALASKA. il 



the extent of the timber line, which ceases at a point on the 

 mainland nearly opposite Kodiak Island. There has recently 

 been discovered yet another species of bear which lives high up 

 in the mountains in the neighbourhood of Mount St. Elias, near 

 Koyak, in S.W. Alaska. It has been named by Professor Dall 

 U. Emmonsi. This is known as the blue or glacier bear. A 

 very few specimens have yet been obtained, and as far as I know 

 none has yet been seen in England. I saw one in the Smith- 

 sonian Institute, at Washington. It was smaller in size than the 

 common black bear, and had a remarkably long fine coat, which 

 was silver grey in colour. 



Turning to the deer tribe, we find most conspicuous for its 

 enormous size the Alaskan moose (Alces gigas}. This is the 

 largest of its species known to science, and I have seen 

 specimens of the bull moose which measured 80 inches in height 

 at the withers, with horns spreading over 70 inches from tip to 

 tip. One specimen killed by my friend Mr. David Hanbury, near 

 my camp on the Kenai Peninsula, in September last, weighed no 

 less than i636lbs., and was 11 feet from nose to tail, measured 

 following the curves of the body. 



A head now at Chicago measures a little over 78 inches span, 

 and is the world's record. The actual extent of the range of 

 moose in Alaska is not quite certain, but the rush of miners and 

 others into the interior of the country is pushing them further 

 year by year into new districts. The natives informed me that 

 twenty years ago moose were unknown on the Kenai Peninsula. 

 Now they are very numerous there, and have doubtless been 

 driven over the divide from the Yukon and Tanana country 

 owing to the great gold rushes in those districts. 



Coming to the Caribou, we are again faced with a problem, 

 since the American scientists cannot yet agree as to how many 

 species really exist in Alaska. For the present I am content to 

 classify them under the two headings of woodland and barren 

 land caribou. Three varieties have already been named at 

 Washington, and are known as Rangifer men/ana, Rangifer 

 Granti^ and Rangifer Osborni, whilst a fourth variety is claimed 



