66 FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



fact in the natural history of the Cervinae that such an 

 instance must be regarded as exceptional. The first two 

 or three days of September over, and the moose has 

 worked off the last ragged strip of the deciduous skin 

 against his favourite rubbing-posts — the stems of young 

 hacmatack (larch) and alder bushes, and with conscious 

 pride of condition and strength, with clean hard antlers 

 and massive neck, is ready to assert his claims against 

 all rivals. A nobler animal does not exist in the American 

 forest ; nor, whatever may have been asserted about his 

 ungainliness of gait and appearance, a form more entitled 

 to command admiration, calculated, indeed, on first being 

 confronted with the forest giant, to produce a feeling of 

 awe on the part of the young hunter. To hear his dis- 

 tant crashings through the woods, now and then drawing 

 his horns across the brittle branches of dead timber as if 

 to intimidate the supposed rival, and to see the great 

 black mass burst forth from the dense forest and stalk 

 majestically towards you on the open barren, is one of 

 the grandest sights that can be presented to a sports- 

 man's eyes in any quarter of the globe. His coat now 

 lies close, with a gloss reflecting the sun's rays like that 

 of a well-groomed horse. His prevailing colour, if in his 

 prime, is jet black, with beautiful golden-brown legs, and 

 flanks pale fawn. The swell of the muscle surrounding 

 the fore-arm is developed like the biceps of a prize- 

 fighter, and stands well out to the front. I have mea- 

 sured a fore-arm of a large moose over twenty inches in 

 circumference. The neck is nearly as round as a barrel, 

 and of immense thickness. The horns are of a light 

 yellowish white stained with chestnut patches ; the tines 

 rather darker ; and the base of the horn, with the lowest 



