HAUNTS AND HABITS OF MOOSE 
a long hairy strip of dewlap skin (the “bell”), which in old age 
draws up into a sort of pouch. The long and narrow head 
ends in an overhanging, flexible muzzle, which can be curled 
around a twig like a proboscis. On this massive head and 
neck the bulls carry a wonderful pair of flattened antlers, 
always surprisingly wide in spread, but varying greatly in 
weight, and that irrespective of the relative bigness of the 
animal. The moose of the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, are 
famous for the immensity and complication of their horns; one 
pair preserved in the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, have 
a spread of 78} inches, show 34 points, measure 15 inches 
around the burr, and with the dry skull weight 93 pounds; 
but very few reach such dimensions. 
The moose is everywhere an animal of the forest, especially 
where water is abundant. Roughness of country appears to 
give it no trouble in spite of its weight, for it will waunts and 
crash through the thickest brush like an elephant. 2?! 
In the East it is exceedingly fond of wading in marshy rivers and 
ponds in summer, even neck-deep, regaling itself on the aquatic 
herbage, or going completely under water to pull up and enjoy 
the bulbous lily roots; but of ordinary grass it eats very little. 
It is a capital swimmer, not fearing to cross rivers or arms of 
the sea miles in width. Its principal diet consists of leaves and 
twigs, preferably the fresh foliage of small hardwood trees and 
willow brush, with some balsam and juniper, which it pulls 
off by curling about the twigs the lips and tongue; and often 
it will bend a young tree over by straddling it with its fore legs, 
and so browse all the top at ease. In the Rocky Mountains 
the food and general habits differ from this in many particulars. 
“In the North and West,” says A. J. Stone, in a thoroughly original 
account 8 of the creature, ‘‘they do not yard up in winter, and consequently 
do not live much on the bark of trees in that season; do not feed to any 
extent on lily pads; do not run so much in the timber; and in some sec- 
tions they range much higher in the mountains.” Mr. Stone seems to have 
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