DEER. 107 



They are attended by dogs, and press forward with 

 loud and clamorous shouts. The elks, alarmed by 

 the noise, fly to the lake and plunge into the water, 

 where they are easily killed by the people in the ca- 

 noes. The other method requires more preparation. 

 The hunters enclose a lacge space of ground with 

 stakes and branches of trees : the bottom opens into 

 another enclosure, which admits of no egress, into 

 which they drive the elks, where they are entangled 

 in snares or shot. The flesh of the elk is extremely 

 palatable and nutritive ; the tongue is excellent ; 

 and the nose is esteemed the greatest delicacy of Ca- 

 nadian epicurism. The skin makes excellent buff 

 leather, being both 'strong, soft, and light, and of it 

 the Indians' make their snow-shoes, and sometimes 

 their canoes. The elk is an 'inhabitant of aft the nor- 

 thern parts of America, and also of Europe and Asia, 

 from Norway to the easternmost limits of ChineseTar- 

 tary j but is never found in any warm climate. That 

 it once existed in Ireland is evident, from the horns 

 which have been dug up m different parts of that 

 island, and by their enormous si-ze, seem to corrobo- 

 rate the almost incredible accounts that some natural- 

 ists have given of the magnitude of the largest breed 

 animals. 



THE REIN-DF.F.R 



Must be considered as an animal which merits, in' 

 'the highest degree, the attention of the naturalist, as 

 it exhibits an evident and most striking instance of 

 the beneficence of that 'Being, whose omnipotent fiat 

 called all creatures into existence. This extraordi- 

 nary quadruped i-; a native of the icy regions of the 

 North, v, hero, by a wise and bountiful regulation of 

 Providence, which diffuses the blessings of the crea- 

 tion, in some degree, over every part of the habitable 

 world, it exists for the support and comfort of a race 

 of men, who, inhabiting a country, where the beauties 

 of nature are unknown, and dreary sterility ever 

 reigns, would find it impossible to subsist among their 

 frozen lakes and snowy mountains, without the ad- 

 yantages which they derive from this inestimable- do^ 



