84 MOOSE DEER. 



I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the moose- 

 deer ; but, in general, foreign animals fall seldom in my way ; 

 my little intelligence is confined to the narrow sphere of my 

 own observations at home. 



LETTER XXXII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, March, 1770. 



ON Michaelmas day, 1768, I managed to get a sight of the 

 female moose belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at Good- 

 wood; but was greatly disappointed, when I arrived at the 

 spot, to find that it died, after having appeared in a languishing 

 way for some time, on the morning before. However, under- 

 standing that it was not stripped, I proceeded to examine this 

 rare quadruped ; I found it in an old greenhouse, slung under 

 the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture ; but, 

 though it had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid 

 a state that the stench was hardly supportable. The grand 

 distinction between this deer and any other species that I have 

 ever met with, consisted in the strange length of its legs ; on 

 which it was tilted up much in the manner of the birds of the 

 grallce order. I measured it, as they do a horse, and found 

 that, from the ground to the wither, it was just five feet four 

 inches, which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a 

 growth that few horses arrive at : but then, with this length of 

 legs, its neck was remarkably short, no more than twelve 

 inches ; so that, by straddling with one foot forward and the 

 other backward, it grazed on the plain ground, with the 

 greatest difficulty, between its legs : the ears were vast and 

 lopping, and as long as the neck ; the head was about twenty 

 inches long, and ass-like ; and had such a redundancy of 

 upper lip as I never saw before, with huge nostrils. * This 

 lip, travellers say, is esteemed a dainty dish in North America. 



* The gigantic moose-deer is said by some travellers to attain from 

 eleven to twelve feet ; but it is probable that the size of a large horse is 

 more near its dimensions. The European elk reaches from seven to eight 

 feet, and measures in length, from the muzzle to the insertion of the tail, 

 ten feet. 



The elk was at one time a native of Ireland, as its remains in a fossil 

 state are often discovered in that countrv. A very large fossil skeleton was 

 found in the Isle of Man, in 1821, wnile digging a marie pit. It was 

 obtained for the Edinburgh College Museum, by that patriotic nobleman 

 the late Duke of Atholl. ED. 



