NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 121 



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 measured three feet and eight inches : the length of the 

 legs before and behind consisted a greal 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 prob- 

 ably 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 any 

 commerce 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 curio- 

 sity. 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, 



[Your most humble servant, 

 GIL : WHITE. 



The Caprimulgus has not been heard yet.] 



