APPENDIX. 353 



own inquiries, and a close personal observation of the habits of the 

 animal, I believed that a different course would produce a more 

 favourable result. The first requisite was a place to keep them in. 

 Now, they had always lived in the woods, summer and winter : why 

 not live in the forest again ? Acting upon this principle, I im- 

 mediately set to work and fenced in about 150 acres of hill land, 

 which was steep and stony, covered with brushwood, and entirely 

 useless for agricultural purposes. In this lot I turned my elks, 

 where they have been six years. In the meantime, I purchased two 

 more does, and have reared eight fawns. Having emasculated the 

 older bucks as fast as the younger ones became adults, I have now a 

 herd so gentle, that a visitor at my farm would hardly imagine that 

 their ancestors, only three generations back, were wdld animals. 

 And this has been done simply by visiting the park two or three 

 times a week, and always carrying them an ear of corn, some little 

 delicacy, or salt, and treating them with unvarying kindness. 



" The facility for extending this business may easily be conceived. 

 Kew York alone might support 100,000 elks on land where our 

 domestic cattle could not subsist, furnishing an amount of venison 

 almost incredible ; while the adjoining State of Pennsylvania, to say 

 nothing of others, might sustain a still larger number without 

 encroaching upon an acre of land now used for stock-rearing, or any 

 other purpose connected with agriculture." * 



Here, then, we have a modem precedent for an experiment which 

 I am convinced would answer in the case of the moose, a still larger 

 and more profitable animal than the wapiti. What an admirable 

 opportunity for utilising those barren wastes which surround us ! 

 Take for example that large triangular piece of waste country in the 

 immediate vicinity of the city, commencing at Dartmouth, extending 

 along the shores of the Basin on one side, bounded by the Dart- 

 mouth lakes on the other, and skirted by the railroad from Bedford 

 to Grand Lake as its base. With the exception of a few clearings 

 on the shores of the Basin, the whole of this is a wilderness, con- 

 taining some 15,000 acres of wild, undulating land, with here and 

 there thick spruce swamps, mossy bogs, and barrens covered with a 

 young growth of birch, poplar, and all the food on which the moose 

 delights to subsist. That they have an especial liking for this small 

 district may be gathered from the fact that I have never known it as 



• In 1862, Mr. Stratton states that he had succeeded in raising- thirty-seven 

 elk. He had trained a pair to harness, and had sold them for $1000. Whilst, 

 as an article of food he can now raise elk cheaper than sheep. 



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