THE WAPITI 



259 



This splendid deer affords a good instance of the 

 difficulty of deciding what name to use in treating of our 

 American game. On the one hand, it is entirely undesir- 

 able to be pedantic ; and on the other hand, it seems a pity, 

 at a time when speech is written almost as much as spo- 

 ken, to use terms which perpetually require explanation 

 in order to avoid confusion. The wapiti is not properly 

 an elk at all; the term wapiti is unexceptionable, and it 

 is greatly to be desired that it should be generally adopted. 

 But unfortunately it has not been generally adopted. 

 From the time when our backwoodsmen first began to 

 hunt the animal among the foothills of the Appalachian 

 chains to the present day, it has been universally known 

 as elk wherever it has been found. In ordinary speech 

 it is never known as anything else, and only an occasional 

 settler or hunter would understand what the word wapiti 

 referred to. The book name is a great deal better than 

 the common name; but after all, it is only a book name. 

 The case is almost exactly parallel to that of the buffalo, 

 which was really a bison, but which lived as the buffalo, 

 died as the buffalo, and left its name imprinted on our 

 landscape as the buffalo. There is little use in trying 

 to upset a name which is imprinted in our geography in 

 hundreds of such titles as Elk Ridge, Elk Mountain, Elk- 

 horn River. Yet in the books it is often necessary to 

 call it the wapiti in order to distinguish it both from its 

 differently named close kinsfolk of the Old World, and 

 from its more distant relatives with which it shares the 

 name of elk. 



Disregarding the Pacific coast form of Vancouver 



