82 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



horses arrive at ; but then, with this length of legs, its neck was 

 remarkably short, no more than twelve inches ; so that, by strad- 

 dling with one foot forward and the other backward, it grazed on 

 the plain ground, with the greatest difficulty, between its legs; the 

 ears were vast and lopping, and as long as the neck ; the head was 

 about twenty inches long, and ass-like ; and had such a redundancy 

 of upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. This lip, 

 travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. It is 

 very reasonable to suppose that 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 con- 

 tribute 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 measured 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-hoofs 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 an 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 any com- 

 merce of the amorous kind. 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. 



Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with that 

 you saw ; and whether you think still that the American moose and 

 European elk are the same creature.* 



I am, with the greatest esteem, &c. 



* The American moose, cervus alces, Linnaeus ; and, I believe, the alces Ainencanus 

 of modern zoologists, "is," writes Major Hamilton Smith, "an inhabitant of northern 



