A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 341 



above it. She continued to feed, usually broad 

 side to me, some three hundred and fifty yards 

 off; her big ears flopped forward and back, and 

 her long snout, with the protuberant nostrils, 

 was thrust out as she turned from time to time 

 to look or smell for her calves. The latter had 

 separated at once from the mother, and spent 

 only a little time in the water, appearing and 

 disappearing among the alders, and among the 

 berry-bushes on a yielding bog of pink and 

 gray moss. Once they played together for a 

 moment, and then one of them cantered off 

 for a few rods. 



When moose calves go at speed they usually 

 canter. By the time they are yearlings, how 

 ever, they have adopted the trot as their usual 

 gait. When grown they walk, trot when at 

 speed, and sometimes pace; but they gallop so 

 rarely that many good observers say that they 

 never gallop or canter. This is too sweeping, 

 however. I have myself, as will be related, 

 seen a heavy old bull gallop for fifty yards 

 when excited, and I have seen the tracks where 

 a full-grown cow or young bull galloped for a 

 longer distance. Lambert came on one close 

 up in a shallow lake, and in its fright it gal 

 loped ashore, churning through the mud and 

 water. In very deep snow one will sometimes 



