436 WILD ANIMALS. 



slightest sound the ruminants and rodents cease feeding, remain- 

 ing motionless, either from fear or instinct ; the rabbit or hare thus 

 frequently avoiding detection, whilst the moose can so silently with- 

 draw if suspecting an enemy that I have remained hours together 

 on the stillest night, beheving the animal to be standing within a 

 few yards in a neighbouring thicket, to which he had advanced in 

 answer to the call, and found at length that he had suspiciously 

 retreated. The great creature had retired, worming his huge bulk 

 and his ponderous antlers through the entangled swamp, without 

 detection of the straining ear to which the nibbling of a porcupine 

 at the bark of a tree in the same grove was plainly audible." 



At the end of the summer, when the horns have reached their full 

 size for the year, the animal himself is also in the perfection of 

 his strength and condition, and, " forsaking the swamps and bogs, 

 where he has spent the summer feeding on the yellow pond-lilies, 

 and evading the moose-fly and similar pests by frequently standing 

 neck deep in some forest lake, he abandons the long silence main- 

 tained while his horns were in the velvet, and enters upon the 

 rutting season — a noisy, aggressive, and pugnacious character. 

 The fights which now occur between the old males are terrific — 

 Greek has met Greek, and the combat is often prolonged until 

 their horns become inextricably interlaced, and both animals die 

 a miserable death." 



Moose are rather solitary animals, wandering about from one 

 place to another, but on the approach of winter, when through the 

 shape of the hoofs, which are long and sharp-pointed, they cannot 

 travel at any speed over the snow, they form into small herds of five 

 and six, often containing a bull, a cow, and the young ones of the 

 two previous seasons, and establish themselves in what is termed 

 a moose-yard. They generally form this yard in the neighbour- 

 hood of young, deciduous trees, such as the white birch, maples, 

 and mountain ash, for these, together with the coniferous trees, 

 the balsam fir and juniper, form their staple diet. Moose cannot 

 graze on the level ground, owing to the length of the legs and short- 

 ness of the neck, but they are able to feed on the leaves and small 

 branches of these trees, and they very rarely wander far from that 

 part of the country where there is an abundant growth of this 



