OF SELBORNE. 135 



this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of 

 trees, and by wading after water plants; towards 

 which way of livelihood the length of legs and great 

 lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that 

 it delights in eating the Nymphcea, or water lily. From 

 the fore feet to the belly behind the shoulder it mea- 

 sured three feet and eight inches : the length of the 

 legs before and behind consisted a great deal in the 

 tibia, which was strangely long; but, in my haste to 

 get out of the stench, I forgot to measure that joint 

 exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; 

 the colour was a grizzly black ; the mane about four 

 inches long ; the fore hoois were upright and shapely, 

 the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it was 

 only two years old, so that most probably it was not 

 then come to its growth. What a vast tall beast must 

 a full grown stag be ! I have been told some arrive at 

 ten feet and a half! This poor creature had at first a 

 female companion of the same species, which died the 

 spring before. In the same garden was a young stag, 

 or red deer, between whom and this moose it was hoped 

 that there might have been a breed ; but their inequality 

 of height must have always been a bar to this *. I 

 should have been glad to have examined the teeth, 

 tongue, lips, hoofs, &c. minutely ; but the putrefaction 

 precluded all farther curiosity. This animal, the keeper 

 told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the extreme 

 frost of the former winter. In the house they showed 

 me the horn of a male moose, which had no front- 

 antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags on the 

 edge. The noble owner of the dead moose proposed 

 to make a skeleton of her bones. 



1 They belong, moreover, to very distinct sections of the great and yet 

 undivided genus Cervus. Independently of the peculiarities of form in 

 the moose, described by Gilbert White, this is also indicated by its 

 broadly palmated horns as opposed to the rounded stem and antlers of 

 the red deer. E. T. B. 



