358 HOOFED ANIMALS 



journey of a hundred and fifty miles in nineteen hours being 

 by no means uncommon. At the palace of Drotningholm, 

 in Sweden, is a portrait of a Reindeer which, upon an 

 occasion of great emergency, drew an officer with important 

 despatches the incredible distance of eight hundred miles in 

 forty-eight hours. 



The Lapland Reindeer is a smaller animal than that of 

 America, the male averaging only about four feet in height. 

 Attempts have been made to naturalise this Deer in the 

 British Isles. Herds have been placed among the moun- 

 tains of Scotland and Ireland, as well as in parks and heaths 

 in England ; but every experiment has failed, the animals 

 sickening and dying in comparatively very short periods. 



WAPITI (Cervus canadensis). 

 Plate XXXVII. 



The Wapiti is the Red Deer of the New World, where 

 at one time it ranged from Mexico as far North as the 

 Great Slave Lake. With the advance of civilisation this 

 noble Deer has retreated, until in greatly decreased numbers 

 it is now found chiefly only in the Cascade and Rocky 

 ranges and adjacent coast elevations, the mountains of 

 Vancouver Island, and in the forested regions of the 

 North-west territories of British North America. 



The Wapiti, or Elk, as hunters often erroneously call it, 

 is a considerably bigger animal than the British Red 

 Deer, to which it is closely related. Only the moose 

 exceeds it in size, a fine male standing from five to five 

 and a half feet high, with antlers measuring as much as 

 five feet in length, the brown beams with white burnished 

 tips completing a superb head, perhaps second to none 

 in the animal world. Even in captivity in the Zoo the 

 antlers of the Wapiti weigh about forty pounds. 



The neck of the animal is strong ; the limbs clean 

 and finely knit; and the whole figure displays great 

 power and vigour. The coat differs from that of the Red 

 Deer, being creamy grey for the most part, darkening 

 into brown on the head and neck. The legs are brown, 



