80 NOTES TO THE 



exception to their coarse fare seems to be the leaves and ten- 

 drils of the yellow pond lily, in search of which delicacy, as 

 mentioned by White, it spends much of its time in summer in 

 wading by lake shores, as well as for the purpose of escaping 

 its swarms of tormentors, the mosquitoes and great breeze flies. 

 It is a frequenter of lake districts at all times, affecting low-lying 

 fir and spruce forests interspersed with long juicy swamps, where 

 the animal treads deeply and noiselessly on a soft cushion of 

 sphagnum moss. Consequently, as White remarks in Letter 

 XXXVI., it is a great swimmer, and may be frequently seen in 

 the water crossing to and from islands. The latter localities are 

 frequently chosen by the females to bring up their young. 



Such habits, and the power which it possesses of maintaining 

 a long submergence beneath the surface whilst feeding on water 

 lily tendrils, have doubtless given origin to the Indian tales of 

 moose coming from the sea and their resorting to it again in 

 times of great persecution, as well as to the repeated assertion 

 of native hunters that the animal can completely hide himself 

 from his pursuers in a lake or pond. The immense aperture of 

 the nostril is certainly capable of being contracted, perhaps even 

 to closing, by the flexible muscular and overhanging upper 

 ridge. In Norway, also, as mentioned by the Ilev. Mr. Barnard, 

 its aquatic habits have given rise to similar legends about the 

 European elk. 1 



The great length of leg of the moose, which Mr. White speaks 

 of as constituting the great distinction between it and all other 

 deer he had ever met with, seems to be due, according to Pro- 

 fessor Owen, to the peculiar length of the cannon bones. This 

 peculiarity, combined with shortness of neck (generally about 

 the same length as the head from the base of the ear to the 

 extremity of the moume), prevents the animal from grazing as 

 other deer, or picking up anything from the ground with its long 

 prehensile, tapir-like upper lip without difficulty, and by widely 

 straddling its fore-legs. Seen probably in this attitude by him- 

 self or his followers, Ctesar, in his Commentaries, describes 

 the elk of the great Hercynian forest of ancient Germany as 

 jointless hunted by weakening trees, so that the animal, leaning 

 against them, would break them down and ensure his own fall. 



Despite the frequent assertions to be found in works of natural 

 history concerning the ungainliness of gait and appearance of 

 the elk, I am convinced that a nobler animal does not exist in 

 the fir forests of either Europe or America, and that associated 

 as it is with their grand solitudes, there is no form more entitled 



1 "Sport in Norway," p. 154. 



