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5G FOREST LIFE IN ACADIE. 



ScliefFer, in his history of Laphmd, piiljlishecl in 1701, 

 speaks of that country " as not containing many elks, but 

 that they rather pass thither out of Lithuania." Other 

 writers ment'on it, but, wlienever a scientific description 

 is attempted it is full of credulous errors, such as its 

 liability to epileptic fits — a belief entertained not only 

 by the peasants of northern Europe, but likewise, 

 with regard to the moose, by the North American 

 Indians ; its attempt to relieve itself of the disease by 

 opening a vein behind the ear with the hind foot, whence 

 pieces of the hoof were worn by the peasants as a pre- 

 ventive afjainst fallinoj sickness : and its beinsj obliGjed to 

 browse backwards through the upper lip becoming en- 

 tangled with the teeth.* There arc also ample notices 

 ,||! of the elk in the works of Pontoppidan and Nilsson ; 



Albcrtus Magnus and Gesner state that in the twelfth 

 century it was met with in Sclavonia and Hungary. The 

 former writer calls it the equicervus or horse hart. In 

 1658 Edward Topsel published his "History of Four- 

 footed Beasts and Serpents : to be procured at the Bible, 

 on Ludgate-hill, and at the Key, in Paul's Churchyard." 

 At page 1G5 he treats of the elk : " They are not found 

 but in the colder northern regio./?, as Russia, Prussia, 

 Hungaria, and Illyria, in the wood ; Hercynia, and 

 among the Borussian Scythians, but most plentiful in 

 Scandinavia, which Pausanias calleth the Celtes." 



• Mr. Bucklaml, referring to the above statouient in " Land ami Water," 

 says : — " Of cour.se some part of the elk -was used medicinally. Our 

 ancestors managed to get a ' pill et haustus ' out of all things, from 

 vipers up to the moss in human skulls. The Pharmacopoeia of the day 

 prescribes a portion of the hoof worn in a ring ; ' it resisteth and freeth 

 from the falling evil, the cramp, and cureth the tits or pangs,' Fancy an 

 hysterical lady being told to take ' elk's hoof ' for a "vveek, to be followed 

 by * hart's horn.' " 



