48 AMERICAN GAME. 



with great difficulty and even pain ; lie is not, however, 



a grazing animal by nature, though, he may resort to it 



at times, from whim or for the lack of other means of 



subsistence, but essentially a browser, for which mode of 



feeding he is particularly adapted, being in a lesser 



degree of the same structure with the cameleopard, 



although the latter is loftier and far more exaggerated 



in the height of his foreparts, owing to the immense 



altitude of the trees a species of mimosa which afford 



his favorite nourishment. Further than this, the huge, 



flexible, prehensile upper lip of the Moose, which he 



uses nearly as an elephant does his trunk, is of great 



service to him in collecting the leaves and tender twigs 



of the birch and alder, which, with the tips of some of 



the evergreens, are his choice dainties. In the summer 



season, when the woods are alive with Pharaoh's plague 



of flies and musquitoes, which seem to devote themselves 



with particular assiduity to the tormenting this great 



giant of the wilderness, he delights to resort to marshy 



pools and lakelets, where he wades out till his head is 



barely above the surface, and lies there wallowing 



deliciously all day long in the pure cold waters, safe 



from his winged persecutors, and browses in security on 



the floating leaves and buds of the water-lilies and on 



the aquatic grasses which he crops as he swims or wades 



about at his pleasure. 



The horns, for antlers they cannot correctly be called, 

 of the male are an enormous and apparently useless 



