MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 33 



interest. Under date of March 4th, 1901, he writes: "I settled at my 

 present residence, now in the borough of Austin, in 1856, then a perfect 

 wilderness. When I came into this region, a young man, I could not be 

 surfeited with the stories told by old settlers and hunters as to what they had 

 seen. On the First Fork of the Sinnemahoning near Prouty Run [Potter 

 Co.] was the 'Great Elk Lick' of this region. About 1835 or '36 the first 

 settlers came into this region. The Elk with other wild creatures then 

 reigned here in their glory. Clifford Haskins, Charles Wykoff, the Jordans, 

 and John Glasspy, with others, were among the prominent men of the time. 

 They were all settled within three or four miles of this lick. They all told me 

 that they would go to the Elk-lick to get a deer as often as they wanted one 

 in the summer time. Here sometimes 50 or more could be seen at a time, 

 with the fawns playing around like young lambs. Cliff. Hoskins said he went 

 there once to get a deer when he saw several Elk in the lick and more in the 

 clearing around it. It being the first time he had seen Elk there he gazed in 

 wonder, when more came in until 40 or 50 had congregated. He watched 

 their grim play for some time and then shot one. The rest started back, then 

 stamped around their fallen comrade gazing in a bewildered way, and stam- 

 peded with the noise of thunder when Hoskins approached. Aunt Eleanor 

 Wyckoff lived a mile and a half from Elk Lick. She told me she thought her 

 brother, Mr. Jordan, was telling one of his big yarns when he told her of a 

 similar view of Elks, but one day after, when the men found they were around 

 again, she went with her husband to see them. She said ' First some came, 

 then more, until the clearing seemed full of them and the men said there 

 were about 50 there.' Regarding the clearing above mentioned where the 

 elk frequented a big lick they rubbed their horns against the trees, sometimes 

 in play or to rub off the velvet or skin from the new horns. This process 

 soon kills all the trees except some big old ones, so that a clearing of 2, 3 or 

 4 acres is made around the lick. A few thorn trees [ Cratcegus] come up on 

 it which grow so low and stout as to defy them, when it is called a 'Thorn 

 Bottom.' The elk are gregarious, living in small herds if unmolested, likely 

 in families, but they congregate at the licks in summer in considerable heads. 



" I have no account of their ' yarding ' in this county. Their food in sum- 

 mer was nettles \_Laportia], elk or cow cabbage, elk grass [a wide-bladed 

 bunch-grass common to the woods], and the tender growing twigs of most 

 deciduous trees ; and in the winter this elk grass, which keeps green all winter, 

 the edible brake or cow brake [Pteris aquilina\ or fern, and browse of deci- 

 duous trees. They migrate in families from section to section of the country, 

 much like deer, but farther away. 



" John Glasspy told me of taking a contract to catch elk alive for some 

 fancier. They find and single out their elk, when two men with a small dog, 

 .and each a coil of rope and well filled knapsack of grub, start on the chase, 



