The Moose 239 



ent kinds of ground, though often close alongside 

 one another. The former went in herds, the cows, 

 calves, and yearlings by themselves, and they roamed 

 through the higher and more open forests, well up 

 toward timber line. The moose, on the contrary, 

 were found singly or in small parties composed at 

 the outside of a bull, a cow, and her young of two 

 years; for the moose is practically monogamous, in 

 strong contrast to the highly polygamous wapiti and 

 caribou. 



The moose did not seem to care much whether 

 they lived among the summits of the mountains or 

 not, so long as they got the right kind of country; 

 for they were much more local in their distribution, 

 and at this season less given to wandering than their 

 kin with round horns. What they wished was a 

 cool, swampy region of very dense growth; in the 

 main chains of the northern Rockies even the val- 

 leys are high enough to be cold. Of course many 

 of the moose lived on the wooded summits of the 

 lower ranges; and most of them came down lower 

 in winter than in summer, following about a fort- 

 night after the elk; but if in a large tract of woods 

 the cover was dense and the ground marshy, though 

 it was in a valley no higher than the herds of the 

 ranchmen grazed, or perchance even in the immedi- 

 ate neighborhood of a small frontier hamlet, then it 

 might be chosen by some old bull who wished to lie 

 in seclusion till his horns were grown, or by some 



