52 GAME ANIMALS OF^NORTH AMERICA. 



they are also enabled to obtain foliage out of reach by riding dowTi 

 young trees. And the lip is used as a hand in seizing, tearing off. 

 and gathering the twigs and leaves of trees and carrying them to 

 the mouth. 



The horns of the full grown Moose are most striking and im- 

 pressive, both from their size and peculiarities, and merit somewhat 

 detailed description. The young bull moose grows two knobs, of 

 from one to two inches long, the first season. These are not cast 

 in the fall of the first or second year. When a year old these 

 knobs are developed into spike horns, varying from five to eight 

 inches in length, and remain on the head until the following April 

 or May, when they drop off, and are replaced by long cylindrical 

 or forked horns ; in the fourth year they begin to branch forward 

 and become palmated ; in the fifth and sixth years they grow in a 

 triangular form, the palmated portions ending in from five to eight 

 points or fingers, the whole resembling an expanded hand. The 

 moose produces the most perfectly developed antlers after the fifth 

 year, the horns of a mature animal often measuring from the root 

 to the extremity, following the curve, four and five feet, as much 

 across from tip to tip, and the palm on the widest surface sixteen 

 inches. They cast their horns annually, after the second year, during 

 the months of December and January, and so prodigious is the 

 growth that by the following August they are furnished with a new 

 and complete set. During the summer months these, as is the case 

 with all deer, are covered with what hunters call velvet. During the 

 velvet state the horns are so tender as to bleed freely when cut, 

 and may like vegetables be sliced with a knife. They begin to 

 harden in the month of Augfust, and animals are sometimes seen in 

 the latter part of that month with peeled and ripe horns. Usually, 

 however, it is in the month of September that this velvet peels ofl 

 and leaves the antlers hard. In August the velvet splits into nar- 

 row pieces, and oftentimes the antlers are seen draped with ribbons. 

 Only the males have horns, yet we have been told of three cows 

 killed bearing small antlers. This is not improbable, since female 

 deer (C. Virginianus) have been known to bear horns. 



These antlers sometimes attain a weight of sixty pounds. The 

 period of gestation with the moose is about nine months. They 

 bring forth about the middle of May one calf the first and second 



