THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WORLDS, 71 



cats. Sometimes they connect the little mossy bogs 

 which often run in chains through a low-lying evergreen 

 forest ; at others they traverse the woods round the 

 >dges of barrens, skirting lakes and swamps. I have 

 often obsei'ved that moose, chased from a distan(?e into a 

 strange district, will at once and intuitively take to one 

 of these moose-paths. 



AVith the exception of tlie leaves and tendrils of the 

 yellow pond lily (Nuphar ad vena), eaten when wallowing 

 in the lakes in summer, and an occasional bite at a tus- 

 sack of broad-leaved grass growing in dry bogs, the food 

 of the moose is solely afforded by leaves and young 

 terminal shoots of bushes. The foUowincr is a list of 

 trees and shrubs from which I picked specimens, showing 

 the browsing of moose, on returning to camp one winter's 

 afternoon. Red maple, white birch, striped maple, swamp 

 maple, balsam fir, poplar, witch hazel, mountain ash. 

 The withrod is as often eaten, and apparently relished 

 as a tonic bitter, as the mountain ash ; but the young 

 poplar growing up in recently burnt lands in small 

 groves, with tender shoots, appears to form the most 

 frequently sought item of diet. In winter young spruces 

 are often eaten, as, also, is the silver fir ; in the latter 

 case the Indians say the animal is sick. The observant 

 eye of the Indian hunter can generally tell in winter, 

 should drifting snow cover up its tracks, the direction in 

 which the moose has proceeded, feeding as he travels, by 

 the appearance of the bitten boughs ; as the incisors of 

 the lower jaw cut into the bough, the muscular upper lip 

 breaks it ofi" from the opposite side, leaving a rough pro- 

 jection surmounting a clean-cut edge, by which the 

 posit'on of the passing animal is indicated. The wild 





