30 



THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



for supporters a conventionalized moose rampant 

 on one side and a wapiti rampant on the other/^ 



In Canada conditions were similar. But the 

 great wooded wilderness of the north was never 

 far away, and moose are, and always will be, a 

 more important economic factor in the Dominion 

 than in the States farther south. Robert Bell, 

 Jr., In an article on the Natural History of the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, published in the Canadian 

 Naturalist and Geologist in 1859, said: "For the 

 last few years most of the hunters have devoted 

 their time to killing the moose simply for the sake 

 of their skins, which now command a higher price 

 than formerly, and this they do at any season of 

 the year which suits their own convenience. We 

 were informed that a party of these hunters had 

 procured three hundred skins the previous winter, 

 and that another party of only three Indians had 

 killed during the same season between ninety and 

 one hundred on one expedition, as many as six 

 sometimes falling a prey to them in one day, yet 

 still these noble animals roam in vast numbers 

 over the district." 



45 The seal was adopted in 1835. A rampant moose and a rampant 

 wapiti support also the coat-of-arms of Ontario. The recumbent moose 

 on the State seal of Maine, lying at the foot of a pine tree, more accu- 

 rately represents the tranquil disposition of the animal during most of 

 the year. 



