102 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO IJSS. 



shut, when there is no occasion to discover any objects in the bottom of the 

 sea, and serve to preserve the glasses from being broken. 



A Description of the Moose* Deer of New England, and a sort of Stag in 

 Firginia ; with some Remarks on Mr. Ray's Description of the flying Squirrel 

 of America. By Mr. Samuel Dale. N° 444, p. 384. 



The moose-deer has been mentioned by several authors ; but their accounts 

 have generally been so very imperfect, as to afford little satisfaction to the curi- 

 ous enquirers into natural history. The first mention that Mr. Dale finds made 

 of this animal, is by Mr. Josselyn, in a small tract, called New England's 

 Rarities ; where he says, " that it is a goodly creature, some of which being 12 

 feet high, their horns exceeding fair, with broad palms; some being 2 fathoms 

 from the top of one horn to the other." Much to the same purpose is the ac- 

 count he gives of this animal in another book, called Two Voyages to New 

 England, where, he says, " that the moose or elk is a creature, or rather a 

 monster of superfluity, when full grown, being many times bigger than an 

 English ox." What Neal, in his History of New England, Vol. ii, p. 573, 

 has of this animal, called by him the mose. is copied from Josselyn. The best 

 and fullest account of this animal was sent by Mr. Dudley, and published in 

 Phil. Trans. N° 368, where he makes them to be of 2 sorts, viz. the common 

 light grey moose, called by the Indians, wampoose ; and the large or black 

 moose. As to the grey moose, Mr. Dale takes it to be no other than that 

 which Mr. John Clayton, in his account of the Virginia quadrupeds, published 

 in Phil. Trans. N°210, calls the elk: which in the Memoirs for a Natural 

 History of Animals, published at Paris, and rendered into English by Mr. 

 Pitfield, p. 167, is called by the name of the stag of Canada, of which Mr. 

 Dale has seen a single horn, sent by Mr. Mark Catesby from Virginia, by the 

 name of an elk's horn, which was in all respects like those of our red deer or 

 stags, only larger, weighing about 12 pounds avoirdupois; and from the burr to 

 the tip, measured by a string, about 6 feet high. Mr. Dudley writes that his 

 grey moose is most like the ordinary deer ; that they spring like them, and herd 

 together sometimes to the number of 30 in a company. But whether he means 

 the red, the Virginian, or the fallow deer, is uncertain, having said nothing of 

 their horns, which was necessary to distinguish them. The black moose is ac- 

 counted by all writers a very large creature. Mr. Josselyn makes it many times 

 larger than an ox ; and Mr. Dudley writes, that the hunters have found a buck 

 or stag-moose 14 spans high from the withers; which at 9 inches to the span, 



* The moose is the American variety of the ccnitu alee* of Linnaeus. 



