THE MOOSE. 227 



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 towards 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 

 valleys 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 sum- 

 mer, following about a fortnight 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 

 immediate 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 cow with a calf 

 to raise. Before settlers came to this high 

 mountain region of Western Montana, a moose 

 would often thus live in an isolated marshy 

 tract surrounded by open country. They 



