REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW DOWNS. XXlil 



As a suitable animal for acclimatization in England, I cannot 

 recommend the moose. The great objection is the nature of his 

 food; he is exclusively a wood-eater, living upon the tender 

 branches of deciduous trees, with a proportion, more particularly in 

 winter, of those of evergreens. No plantation or copse in England 

 could thrive with a couple of moose in it; and, though fond of 

 roots, such feeding would prove fatal, as I know from experience; 

 whilst, with one exception, I have never seen a tame moose accept 

 hay or grass. If it were not for this, we would have in the moose 

 an animal most appropriate for acclimatization with the speed 

 of a trotting horse, the strength and endurance of an ox, a docile 

 and useful beast of burden, and good for food. Its flesh, being 

 very open in its fibre, is very digestible, possessing a good flavour 

 between that of beef and that of venison. It always commands a 

 good price in the market when in season. 



Speaking of this animal, the moose was once exceedingly plenti- 

 ful in the forests of Nova Scotia, and is still holding its own 

 despite increasingly restricted areas, and the large ammal tribute 

 it is called on to pay to the sportsman to say nothing of the 

 poachers, back-wood settlers or greedy Indians. And so the con- 

 stant employment of Downs as the one taxidermist in the province 

 who could set up a head and horns, can be well imagined. All 

 through the autumn and that part of the winter during which 

 moose-hunting was legal, a stream of trophies from the woods 

 came up to his work-sheds. The skins of the heads were there 

 pickled in preservative liquor in vats, and the horns, with a portion 

 of the frontal bone of the skull, cut out and labelled with the 

 shooter's name. He employed a trusted workman to carve out the 

 pine block (it was always of yellow pine) on which the skins were 

 stretched and united round the horns, which were with the con- 

 necting piece of the skull firmly screwed down. It was quite a 

 sight to see these magnificent sporting trophies ranged in his shed. 

 Downs stuffed many hundreds of these moose heads as well as cari- 

 boo (I see Mr. Piers states eight hundred in his paper) and they 

 are scattered all through Europe and America. Some I know of are 

 still in good preservation after fifty years of resistance to time and 

 the attacks of moth. One of his finest specimens is (or was) I 



