THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLDS. 83 



often purposeless destruction of woods by the axe, and 

 the constant devastation of large areas of forest by fires, 

 too frequently the result of carelessness, are reducing the 

 moisture of the American wilderness, removing the 

 sponge-like carpet of mosses by which the water was 

 retained, and rendering the latter a less fitting abode for 

 the moose. Eestriction of his domains and constant dis- 

 turbance are undoubtedly slowly dwarfing the species. 

 We no longer hear of examples of the monster moose of 

 the old times of which Indian tradition still speaks, and 

 when the well-authenticated diminution in the size of 

 the red deer of the Scottish hills is remembered, an ap- 

 pearance of less exaggeration than is usually attributed 

 to them marks the tales of the early American voyageurs 

 concerning the moose. 



When the Eussian aurochs and the musk-sheep of 

 Arctic America shall have disappeared, it is to be feared 

 that Cervus Alces of the Old and New Worlds, his fir 

 forests levelled, his favourite swamps drained, and unable 

 to exist continuously in the broad glare and radiation of 

 a barren country, will follow, to be regretted as one of 

 the noblest and most important mammals of a past 

 age ; his bones will be dug from peat-bogs by a future 

 generation of naturalists, and prized as are now those of 

 the Great Auk of the islands of the North Atlantic, or of 

 the Struthiones of New Zealand, which have perished 

 within the ken of the scientific record of modern natural 

 history. 



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