MOOSE-DEER. 



stronger features are usually characteristic of the 

 male sex; but this sexual diversity does not take 

 place in earlier life ; for a beautiful youth shall be so 

 like a beautiful girl, that the difference shall not be 

 discernible : 



" Quern si puellarum insereres choro, 

 Mire sagaces falleret hospites 

 Discrimen obscurum, solutis 



Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu." HOR. 



If he were by girls surrounded, 

 Strangers soon would be confounded : 

 Manhood's form could no one trace 

 In his beardless female face. 



LETTER XXXVI. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, Aug. 1, 1770. 

 DEAR SIR, 



THE French, I think, in general, are strangely 

 prolix in their natural history. What Linnaeus says 

 with respect to insects, holds good in every other 

 branch : " Verbositas prasentis s&culi, calamitas 

 artis" 



Pray how do you approve of Scopoli's new work ? 

 As I admire his Entomologia, I long to see it. 



I forgot to mention in my last letter (and had not 

 room to insert in the former,) that the male moose, 

 in rutting time, swims from island to island, in the 

 lakes and rivers of North America, in pursuit of the 

 females. My friend, the chaplain, saw one killed in 

 the water, as it was on that errand, in the river St. 

 Lawrence : it was a monstrous beast, he told me ; 

 but he did not take the dimensions. 



