4 



THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



which then connected the two continents at 

 Bering Strait, we shall never know. According 

 to Professor William Berryman Scott of Princeton 

 University the moose, the caribou, and the wapiti 

 came from the Old World to the New not earlier 

 than the Pleistocene. The moose seems to have 

 preceded the caribou and the wapiti in the long 

 migration. At any rate, the moose was present 

 on the western half of the continent in the later 

 Pleistocene, when the Glacial Era was drawing to a 

 close.^ The ancestors of the white-tailed or Vir- 

 ginia deer doubtless came from the same far-away 

 Asiatic home, but in an earlier geologic age. How 

 far south the moose ranged at that early day is 

 not known, but his fossil remains are said to have 

 been found south of the Ohio and Missouri 

 rivers."^ 



^ A Hi tory of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere (New York> 

 1913), p. 413. 



3 Ihid., p. 202. Geologists variously estimate the period which has 

 elapsed since the Pleistocene as from 100,000 to 200,000 years. Those 

 of us who carry split-second watches will wonder at the inability of the 

 geologists to measure time with more precision. 



4 Osborn, uhi supra, p. 449. Professor Osborn (pp. 471-472) mentions 

 fossil bones of Alces'' as found in southern South CaroHna. He cites 

 as an authority Francis S. Holmes in the American Journal of Science y 

 1858, pp. 442-443, and in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences, 1859, pp. 177-185. But Professor Holmes in his list names 

 the "elk" as represented among the fossil renains, meaning, no doubt, 

 the American elk, or wapiti {Cervus canadensis), not the European elkt 

 or moose {Cervus alces or Alces americanus). This is an instance of 

 the confusion which has been entailed by the misnaming of the wapiti 

 by the early settlers in America. See p. 237. 



