DRAWN BY W. H. DRAKE. ENGRAVED BY R. A. MUULER. 



HEAD OF A MOOSE KILLED IN MAINE IN 1880, SHOWING EXTRAORDINARY DEVELOPMENT OF ANTLERS. 



THE VANISHING MOOSE, 



AND THEIR EXTERMINATION IN THE ADIRONDACKS. 



SO mucli has been written of late, especially 

 in this Columbian year, of the great achieve- 

 ments and rapid development of the United 

 States that sometimes we lose sight of the 

 fact that we are still in a period of transition. 

 The old order of things has largely passed 

 away, but we are yet within sight of the pri- 

 meval state of a savage and beautiful wilder- 

 ness, and can obtain some idea of what this 

 country once was by the untouched or only 

 partly mutilated corners that remain. The end, 

 however, is near, and before many years we 

 shall have to cultivate trees as is done in Eu- 

 rope, and the only hunting will be in private 

 parks. Of the great forests that absolutely 

 covered the Eastern and Northwestern States, 

 and served as the home of vast numbers of ani- 

 mals, scarcely anything is left. That little will be 

 destroyed by fire and ax within two decades, and 

 with the trees will vanish the last of the game. 



It is really appalling to compare the enor- 

 mous amount of game on this continent at the 

 beginning of the century with the wretched 

 remnant of to-day. At that time the American 

 buffalo roamed the prairies in countless thou- 

 sands, and was probably the most numerous 

 large animal in the world, and now — but all 

 Americans know the shameful story of its ex- 

 termination. 



Little more than a hundred years ago great 

 herds of elk swarmed in the Kentucky and 

 IHinois hunting-grounds, and even as late as 

 1820 a few could be found in the district north 

 of the Ohio River. To-day their fast-dimin- 

 ishing bands are confined to the mountains of 

 the Northwest. The same sad story of fast-ap- 

 proaching extinction is true of the other game 

 Vol. XLVn.— 45. 



animals, the antelope, bighorn, mountain goat, 

 and the various kinds of deer; in fact, it is 

 true of all our larger mammals. Many persons 

 living to-day will see their final disappearance 

 in a wild state; so, in view of this destruction 

 in the flora and fauna of our land, it would be 

 wise to consider carefully the most important 

 of the American animals that remain while yet 

 we can gather the facts from those who actually 

 know them, and need not rely on the wretched 

 compilations which pass for natural histories, 

 and which are based, perhaps, on a few badly 

 mounted specimens. 



The largest and most interesting of our na- 

 tive quadrupeds is the moose, an animal but 

 little known to the average inhabitant of the 

 United States. Oftentimes, in old settled coun- 

 tries, deer, bear, and a few other animals linger 

 on, and become well known to the inhabitants 

 of the more thinly populated districts, passing 

 into the literature of the people, as has been 

 the case in Europe. Not so the moose and 

 caribou. They shrink back before the most ad- 

 vanced outpost of civilization, and soon vanish 

 altogether, leaving behind the names of lakes, 

 rivers, and mountains as the only evidences of 

 their existence. So complete in some instances 

 has been the disappearance of moose that one 

 actually hears people question the fact that 

 they ever lived in the Adirondacks, where forty 

 years ago they were well known. The compar- 

 ative mystery that has always clung to moose 

 has caused a great deal of nonsense and error 

 to be written about them. It often begins with 

 their name, and in this way much confusion 

 has been caused by would-be naturalists be- 

 tween the moose ( CefX'us alecs) and our Ameri- 



345 



