74 



THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



favorable conditions is believed to be eighteen or 

 twenty years. 



The moose rarely resorts to a running gait, 

 unless charging an adversary. This may be 

 because his shoulders are higher than his hind- 

 quarters. His usual gait is a rapid shambling trot. 

 He does not jump like other deer, but, thanks to 

 long legs, steps over obstructions which a whitetail 

 would clear by a bound. A moose will sometimes 

 escape without noise over ground where an Indian 

 could hardly pass without being heard. 



Moose have many times been driven to harness. 

 For a short distance, on a good road, a good horse 

 would prove the better traveler, but at the end 

 of the fiftieth mile the horse would be hopelessly 

 distanced. Snow of a depth which would offer 

 great difficulty to a horse or to cattle does not 

 greatly retard a moose, whose long legs are admi- 

 rably adapted for travel on rough woods roads or 

 in deep snow. 



Prof. Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, in a paper on the domestication of 

 deer, bison, etc., published in the report of the 

 Commissioner of Patents for 1851,'^ says: "A 

 gentleman near Houlton, Me., some years since 



^5 Part ii. {Agriculture), p. 115. 



