100 



THE NATURAL HISTORY 



[LETT. 



with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a dainty 

 dish in North America. It is very reasonable to suppose that 

 this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing off trees, and by 

 wading after water plants ; towards which way of livelihood the 

 length of legs and great lip must contribute much. I have read 

 somewhere that it delights in eating the nympJuea, or water- 

 lily. From the fore-feet to the belly behind the shoulder it 

 measured three feet and eight inches: the length of the legs 

 before and behind consisted a great deal in the tibia, which was 

 strangely long; but, in my haste to get out of the stench, I 

 forgot to measure that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be 

 about an inch long ; the colour was a grizzly black ; the mane 

 iibout four inches long ; the fore-hoofs were upright and shapely, 

 the hind flat and splayed. The spring before, it was only two 

 years old, so that most probably it was not then come to its 

 growth. What a vast tall beast must a full-grown stag be ! 

 I have been told that some arrive at ten feet and a half ! This 

 poor creature had at first a female companion of the same 

 species, which died the spring before. In the same garden was 

 a young stag, or red deer, between whom and this moose it was 

 hoped that there might have been a breed ; but their inequality 

 of height must always be a bar. I should have been glad to 

 have examined the teeth, tongue, lips, hoofs, &c., minutely ; but 

 the putrefaction precluded all further curiosity. This animal, 

 the keeper told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme 

 frost of the former winter. In the house they showed me the 

 horn of a male moose, which had no front-antlers, but only a 

 broad palm with some snags on the edge. The noble owner of 

 the dead moose proposed to make a skeleton of her bones. 



Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with 

 that you saw ; and whether you think still that the American 

 moose and European elk are the same creature. 



SELBOKNE, March, 1770. 



