FAMILY CERVID.F. 
115 
period appears to depend much on the latitude, mildness or severity of the season. While 
growing, the horns are covered with a velvet-like membrane, which peels off as soon as they 
have attained their growth. It has often been a matter of surprise,, that while so many horns 
are annually cast, so few are ever found. This is to be explained by the fact, that as soon as 
shed, they are eaten up by-the smaller gnawing animals. I have repeatedly found them half 
gnawed up by the various kinds of field mice so numerous in our forests. 
The Deer is an exceedingly useful animal, not only as furnishing an excellent article of food 
to the settlers in frontier counties, where it would be impracticable to obtain any other meat, 
but also as furnishing the buckskin of commerce. It feeds on buds and twigs of trees, shrubs, 
berries and grasses. It appears to be particularly fond of the buds and flowers of the pond- 
lily. 
It ranges from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, and probably still farther south. I saw two 
deer alive from Campechy, which were exhibited as Mexican deer, but offered no distinctive 
characters from those of our common deer. It is found throughout the west to the Rocky 
mountains. It does not appear to extend into Canada. 
THE MOOSE. 
C^RVUS ALCES. 
(PLATE XXIX. FIG. 2 ) 
Cervus alces. Lin. 12 Ed. p. 92. 
Moose Deer. Penn. Arct. Zool. Vol. 1, p. 17, pi. 8. 
C. alces. Harlan, Fauna, p. 229. Godman, Am. Nat. Hist. Vol. 2, p. 274, figure. 
American Black Elk. Griffith’s Cuvier, Vol. 4, p. 72, Plate of Heads. 
The Elk. Hamilton Smith, lb. Vol. 5, p. 303. 
Moose Deer. Richardson, F. B. A. Vol. 1, p. 232. 
Moose. Emmons, Mass. Report, 1838, p. 28; for 1840, p. 74. 
Characteristics. Blackish grey. Adult male with broad flattened horns. Snout long, pre¬ 
hensile. Neck with a mane. Size of a horse, and largest of the genus. 
Description. Stature large. Head long, somewhat nan-owed,before the eyes, then enlarged 
into a thick curved nose ; the muzzle small. Nostrils long, narrow, enlarged beneath. Eyes 
moderately large, and placed near the base of the horns ; lachrymal pit small. Ears long 
and asinine.. Neck very short, and furnished with a short mane. A tuft of long coarse hair 
like a beard beneath the throat in both sexes ; in the young, this appears like a pendulous 
gland. Horns in' the male only. - The first year, it exists in the shape of. a short knob, not 
more than an inch high ; in the following year, it is a round spike, slightly directed outwards, 
and about a foot long; in the third year, they begin to branch forward, and to become pal- 
mated above. In full grown adult males, the palmated portion ends in from five to eight short 
tips; and the brow antlers, if present, are rourtd and pointed, directed forwards, and occasion¬ 
ally bifid or even trifid. Hair coarse and angular, longer upon the neck and withers. 
