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Photo by George Shiras, 3rd 
ARCTIC TERN e;n JOYING A RIDE ON A DEAD LIMB FLOATING IN THE CENTER OE SKILAK 
LAKE: THE BIRDS ARE LOATH TO LEAVE WHEN PHOTOGRAPHED AT SIX EEET 
and two others, equally big, were at the 
lick one morning on arrival, but could 
not be photographed from the water. All 
the others, with one exception, were 
cows or bulls ranging from one to five 
years of age. The exception noted was 
an enormous bull that came down wind 
on an unused runway to the rear of the 
blind just when I was eating lunch. He 
gave a loud grunt behind my back and 
I nearly choked with surprise. In the 
excitement he got away, leaving only a 
mental picture of a frightened moose 
and a flustered photographer. 
I saw no calves and only their tracks 
in some of the heavily forested valleys 
about the lake. Occasionally large moose 
could be seen a mile or two away feed- 
ing in and out of the willows near the 
summit of the mountains. 
The light-brown color, noticeable the 
first day, was repeated in the case of all 
the other moose, the shade approaching 
very closely that of the great brown bear 
of the inland. Judging from the shreds 
of the spring-shed hair and that of sev- 
eral abandoned hides near hunting 
camps, the winter pelage must be a light 
buiT-brown in color. In the extreme 
southern range most moose are dark- 
colored in summer, looking almost black 
at a distance, with a somewhat lighter 
shading on the legs and flanks. 
Some of the pelts examined show that 
all the hair of the narrow abdominal 
strip was glossy black, while that of the 
side and back had buff-brown tips, with 
a pure white body to the root, so that, 
with the darker tips clipped, the animal 
would appear to be white from the ven- 
tral strip upwards. 
The present classification of the giant 
moose depends chiefly upon skull charac- 
ters and colors of the male, as shown by 
Mr. G. S. Miller, Jr., in the original de- 
scription of the species, but it will doubt- 
less prove that a careful examination of 
the pelage colors, superficial or otherwise, 
as in the case of Ovis dalli and Ovis 
stonei, will afford even better grounds 
than were originally supposed for recog- 
nizing the Alaska moose as a distinct 
form. The greater average size of the 
horns should also form a distinct char- 
acter. 
Several encounters with regular pa- 
trons permitted observations somewhat 
out of the ordinary and may be quoted 
in part : 
446 
