9 6 4 



The height of the elk has been much exaggerated, some writers 

 Dimensions assert i n g that the male may stand as much as eight feet at the withers. 

 Mr. Caton observes, however, that it is safe to say that it may attain a height of 

 six feet, or occasionally rather more, and we may probably put the extreme limits 

 as not exceeding six and one-half feet. The weight of an average adult male elk 

 is given by the writer last cited as seven hundred pounds, but large specimens will 

 reach nine hundred or one thousand, and it is said, even as much as twelve hundred 



pounds. 



Adult male elk, and occasionally the females, have a curious pendulous ap- 

 pendage on the throat formed by a dilatation of the skin, and covered with long and 

 coarse blackish hairs. This appendage may vary in length from four to ten 

 inches, and is known to the American hunters as the bell; its use is unknown. 



The elk has a distribution very nearly the same as that of the rein- 

 Distnbution ^^ although it does not extend so far north, and is, indeed, limited 

 by the northern extension of trees, being essentially a forest animal. In Europe, 

 although now greatly diminished in numbers, it is found locally in Scandinavia, 

 Eastern Prussia, Lithuania, and parts of Russia, such as the neighborhood of Oren- 

 burg, the government forest near Moscow, and the districts bordering the river 

 Samaria in Astrakhan. Thence it extends eastward into the subarctic portions of 

 Siberia although its extreme limits in this direction are not fully ascertained. A 

 few years ago an elk was shot in Galicia, which had probably wandered from more 

 northern latitudes. In the time of Pallas, elk were also found on the northern 

 slopes of the Caucasus; while Csesar mentions them as inhabiting the Black Forest. 

 During the prehistoric period, their distribution was still more extensive in Europe, 

 and their remains have been found in many parts of England, the most southern 

 point being Walthamstow in Essex. In the still earlier deposits of the Norfolk 

 forest bed, the species was preceded by the broad-fronted elk (A. latifrons). 



In North America the range of the elk appears to have extended originally from 

 about the forty-third to the seventieth parallel of latitude, its northern limit being 

 marked by the southern border of the so-called barren grounds. Mr. Caton says 

 that elk have been seen as far south as the Ohio, and as far north as the Macken- 

 zie river. Writing in the year 1865, Mr. J. G. L,ockhart states that elk were 

 then common over the whole of British America as far north as the barren grounds, 

 although absent from particular localities. Thus they were especially abundant 

 on the west side of the Rocky mountains, and continued so to Behring Strait, 

 but were unknown on the shores of Hudson's Bay in the neighborhood of York Fac- 

 tory. Although specially protected in Ontario, the elk is, however, now rapidly 

 disappearing from the forests of North America, and this is not to be wondered at, 

 when we learn that some years ago several hundreds of these animals were shot on 

 one occasion in New Brunswick merely for the sake of their hides, their carcasses 

 being left to rot on the ground. Elk are still comparatively common in Alaska, but 

 have more or less completely disappeared from certain districts where they were 

 formerly abundant. As far back as 1881, Mr. Caton wrote, that " they have prob- 

 ably entirely ceased their visits to Newfoundland, but in Labrador many still re- 

 main, Chough gradually retreating thence toward the more secluded and inaccessible 



