THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLDS. 53 



the Carpathians. The name is still preserved in the 

 mbdern Harz and Erz." Gronovius states that the 

 German word was Hirtsenwald, or forest of stags. In 

 an old translation of the Commentaries I find the word 

 " aloes " rendered " a kind of wild asses," and really a 

 better term could hardly be applied, had the writer, 

 unacquainted with the animal, caught a passing glimpse 

 of an elk, especially of a young one without horns. But 

 it is evident that Caesar alludes to a large species of deer, 

 and, although he compares them to goats (it is nearly 

 certain that the original word was "capreis," "caprea" 

 being a kind of wild goat or roebuck), and received from 

 his informants the story of their being jointless — an 

 attribute, in those days of popular errors and super- 

 stitions, ascribed to other animals as well — the very fact 

 of their being hunted in the manner described, by 

 weakening trees, so that the animal leaning against them 

 would break them down, involving his own fall, proves 

 that the alee was a creature of ponderous bulk. 



The descriptive paragraph alluded to contains one of 

 the fallacies which have always been attached to the 

 natural history of the elk, ancient and modern ; and, 

 even now-a-days the singular appearance of the animal 

 attempting to browse on a low shrub close to the ground, 

 his legs not bent at the joint, but straddling stiffly as he 

 endeavours to cull the morsel with his long, prehensile 

 upper lip, might impart to the ignorant observer the idea 

 that the stilt-like legs were jointless. The fabrication of 

 their being hunted in the way described was, of course, 

 based on the popular error as to the formation of their 

 limbs. '^ Mutilceque sunt cornibus" may imply that 

 Caesar, or more likely some of his men, had either seen a 



