Distribution of the Moose 



even picked heads from the east. These antlers, 

 in addition to their size, have a certain peculiarity 

 in the position of the brow antlers, the plane of 

 which is more often turned nearly at right angles 

 to the plane of the palmation of the main beam 

 than in the eastern moose. In a high percentage 

 of the larger heads there is on one or both antlers 

 an additional and secondary palmation. In the 

 arrangement and development of the brow antlers, 

 and in the complexity produced by this doubling 

 of the beam, a startling resemblance is shown to 

 the extinct Cerualces, a moose-like deer of the 

 American Pleistocene, possibly ancestral to the 

 genus Alces. If this resemblance indicates any 

 close relationship, we have in the Alaska moose a 

 survivor of the archaic type from which the true 

 moose and Scandinavian elk have somewhat de- 

 generated. The photographs of the Alaska moose 

 shown herewith have this double palmation. 



Several heads from the Kenai Peninsula rang- 

 ing over six feet are authentic; a photograph of 

 the largest moose head in the world is published 

 herewith. This head is in the possession of the 

 Field Columbian Museum at Chicago, and 

 measures 78^2 inches spread. The animal that 

 bore it stood about seven feet at shoulders, but 

 this height is not infrequently equaled by eastern 



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