258 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



The general appearance of the eastern wapiti is described by 

 Audubon and Bachman (1851), the latter of whom kept on his 

 grounds near New York City a pair that were obtained as 

 young animals in western Pennsylvania and that later served 

 as the originals from which their plate was drawn by Audubon. 

 Head dark brown, neck darker, blackish; a white patch on 

 each side of the under jaw, with a black stripe between, passing 

 down on to the throat. No pale eye-ring. General color dark 

 gray all over except for the prominent white rump-patch. 

 The male in winter develops a heavy fringe of long hair on the 

 throat and back of the neck. Under surface of body, brown. 

 The winter pelage is somewhat grayer than that of summer 

 which is redder, and the young are spotted with white. The 

 large antlers have a rounded beam and extend back, giving off 

 a brow tine and two others, the bez and trez, before the longest 

 is reached, beyond which is another fork, its tines in the same 

 anteroposterior plane. Although there are a number of antlers 

 in existence, there is apparently but a single skin of the eastern 

 wapiti preserved, namely, one in the possession of the Academy 

 of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. Bailey (1937), on the 

 basis of the slender evidence available, believes that the 

 eastern animal was not so large and heavy as the Rocky Moun- 

 tain race and was brighter brown and more richly colored than 

 any of the western forms. 



Three hundred years ago the eastern wapiti ranged from 

 southern Quebec to the edge of the Plains and southward 

 through extreme western New England and western New 

 York, perhaps as far south as North Carolina on the Atlantic 

 seaboard, and through the Allegheny Mountains to northern 

 Alabama. Such a large animal could not fail to have been 

 useful to the early settlers on account of its meat and hide; 

 hence it is not surprising that localities the elk haunted or 

 where they were killed became commemorated and distin- 

 guished from other wilderness spots by appropriate place- 

 names. A fairly accurate map of the former range of this 

 animal in the eastern United States might be made by plotting 

 the cities, counties, creeks, and rivers named after it. Thus in 

 western New York we have Elkcreek (town) and Elk Creek 

 (stream), Elkdale; in Pennsylvania, Elk City, Elk County, 

 Elk Creek, Elk Grove, Elk Hill, Elk Horn, Elk Lake, Elkrun; 

 in Maryland, Elk Neck and Elkton; in Virginia, Elk Creek, 



