THE MOOSE-DEER, 43 



THE MOOSE-DEER, OR ELK. 



IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. CROSS, ROYAL MEWS, LONDON. 



Thb Moose-deer or elk may be considered as the largest of the deer tribe, and is not often to be 

 seen in the menageries of this country. According to the accounts of some travellers, a full grown elk 

 has been known to attain the height of seventeen hands, and to weigh above twelve hundred pounds. 

 Its shape, particularly its head, is rather inelegant. Its horns are solid, covered while young with a 

 hairy skin growing from the top ; they are naked and annual branched. They spread out imme- 

 diately from the base into a broad palmated form, and at the top are sometimes twelve feet asunder. 

 It has eight front teeth in the lower jaw, no canine teeth, and sometimes single teeth in the upper jaw. 

 Its neck is much shorter than the head, with a short thick upright mane of a light brown colour. The 

 eyes are small, the ears about a foot long, very broad, and they appear to be almost in continual 

 motion. The nostrils are very large ; the upper lip broad and heavy, hanging considerably over the 

 lower, and has a deep fulcus in the middle, so as to appear almost bifid. Its colour is a dark-greyish 

 brown, much- paler or inclining to whiteness on the legs and beneath the tail. The hair, which is of 

 a strong, coarse, elastic nature, is much longer on the top of the shoulders, and on the ridge of the 

 neck, than on the other part, forming a kind of mane. Its horns sometimes weigh fifty-six pounds, 

 and on a moderate calculation measure each about thirty-two inches in length. The elk now in the 

 possession of Mr. Cross has its horns in the first stages of their growth, and the reproduction of horns 

 constitutes, in many points of view, one of the most remarkable phenomena of animal physiology. It 

 affords a most striking proof, first of the power of the nutritive process, and of the rapid growth 

 which results from this process in warm-blooded animals — for the horn of a stag, which may weigh a 

 quarter of a hundred weight, is completely formed in ten weeks; secondly, of the remarkable power 

 of absorption, by which, towards the time of shedding the old horn, a complete separation is effected 

 of the substance which was before so firmly united with the frontal bone ; thirdly, of a limited dura- 

 tion of life in a part of an animal, entirely independent of the life of the whole animal, which in some 

 of the deer tribe extends to thirty years ; fourthly, of change of calibre in particular vessels — for the 

 branches of the external carotid, which supply the horn, are surprisingly dilated during its growth, 

 and recover their former dimensions when that process has ceased ; fifthly, of a peculiar sympathy 

 which is manifested between the growth of the horns and the generative functions. The horn is ge- 

 nerally shed in the spring, and reproduced in the summer. 



The elks generally inhabit the Isle of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and the western side of the Bay 

 of Fundy, Canada, and the country round the Great Lakes, almost as far south as the river Ohio. 

 These may be considered as their present northern and southern limits of the New Continent. In 

 Europe it is found chiefly in Sweden, Norway, and Russia. In Asia, it is most frequently met with 

 in Siberia, where it grows to an enormous size. The elk and the moose, according to Mr. Pennant, 

 are the same species, the latter being derived from Musa, which in the Algonkin language signifies 

 that animal. In this country it was formerly called the black moose, to distinguish it from the stag, 

 which was called the grey moose. The French call it L'Orignal. The elk was known to the Romans 

 by the name of Alee and Machlis ; they believed that it had no joints in its legs; and from the extra- 

 ordinary size of the upper lip, they entertained the singular conceit, that it could not feed without 

 going backward as it grazed. 



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