• 20 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



a stronger make ; his horns are not palmated, but round, a pair of which weighs upwards 

 of thirty pounds ; they usually accompany buffaloes, with whom they range, in droves, in 

 the upper and remote parts of Carolina, where, as well as in our other colonies, they are 

 improperly called elks. The French, in America, call this beast the Canadian stag. In 

 New England, it is called the gray moose, to distinguish it from the black moose." iVfl- 

 lural History of the Carolhuts, vol. 1. 



Pike saw plenty of these animals on the Mississippi, sometimes the distance was four feet 

 between the horns, and one hundred and fifty of them were frequently in a flock. Pen- 

 nant says, that stags abound in the mountainous southern tract of Siberia, where they 

 grow to a size far superior to what is known in Europe. The height of a grown hind is 

 four feet nine inches and a half, its length, eight feet, that of its head, one foot eight inches 

 and a half. Arctic Zoology, vol. 3. 



Mr. Jefferson, in his notes on Virginia, says, perhaps it wiH be found that there is, 



1. The moose, black and gray, the former being said to be the male, the latter the fe- 

 male. 



2. The caribou or renne. 



3. The flat horned elk, or orignal. 



4. The round horned elk. 



The black moose and the third, are the same animal, and the grey moose and the fourth. 

 The moose has large flat palmated horns ; our elk has round cylindrical horns. The 

 former is confined to the regions of the north ; the latter extends itself from Canada to 

 the south. 



The animal called caribou in Canada, is the rein deer, or cervus tarandus, of the old 

 world. Buffon says, that the elk is found only on this side, and the rein deer beyond the 

 polar circle in Europe and Asia. In America, we meet with them in lower latitudes, be- 

 cause there the cold is greater than in Europe. And he says, that this animal formerly 

 existed in the forests of Gaul and Germany ; if so, there is no improbability in supposing 

 that he formerly visited us in search of his favourite food, the rein deer moss. 



From the chaos which has existed on this subject, we may extricate order and light, 

 and I think we are well warranted in saying, 



1. That the animal which we call the elk, is not the cervus alces, but that it is either 

 a variety of the stag, red deer, or hart of Europe, the cervus elaphas, or a distinct species 

 of cervus. 



2. That it is not the moose, and that the moose, according to the opinion of the most 

 eminent naturalists, is a variety of the cervus alces. 



