MOOSE-DEER. 85 



It is very reasonable to suppose, that this creature supports 

 itself chiefly by browsing of trees, and by wading after water 

 plants, towards which way of livelihood the length 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 great 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 probably 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 curiosity. This 

 animal, the keeper told me, seemed to enjoy itself best in the 

 extreme frost of the former winter. In the house, they 

 shewed 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. 



LETTER XXXIII. 



TO THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



SELBORNE, April 12, 1770. 



DEAR SIR, I heard many birds of several species sing last 

 year after midsummer; enough to prove that the summer 

 solstice is not the period that puts a stop to the music of the 

 woods. The yellow-hammer, no doubt, persists with more 

 steadiness than any other ; but the woodlark, the wren, the 



