176 THE AMERICAN MOOSE 



of which were sometimes "two fathom asunder/* 

 was not the first, nor the last, to exaggerate in this 

 respect. Lahontan, writing from Canada under 

 date of July 8, 1686, tells of the "great flat horns" 

 of I'orignaly "which weigh as much as 300 pounds, 

 and even as much as 400, if we may believe those 

 who have seen them."^ If the young baron had 

 seen the horns himself possibly he would have 

 added a few pounds. At any rate, he saw the 

 Falls of Niagara, and tells us that ^'ce Saut a sept 

 ou huit cens ptez de hauteur^^ — an exaggeration of 

 more than 400 per cent. 



As recently as 1890, in The Big Game of North 

 America, — the introduction to which was written 

 by Judge Caton, — a writer mentions a western 

 Wyoming moose-head having a spread of 102 

 inches. "The largest pair of antlers I ever saw,'* 

 he tells us, "was taken from the head of a moose 

 that was killed in the Teton Basin, near the head of 

 Snake River. . . . They measured, from tip to 

 tip, 8^ feet."^ It is a pity that trophies like this 

 are never preserved. How they would dwarf 

 the largest heads that any of us ever saw, or ever 

 will see, even in the greatest museums! 



There is no ground for disputing the dimensions 



^ Nouveaux Voyages dans VAmerique Septentrionale (The Hague,, 

 1703), vol. i., p. 74. 

 ' Page 24. 



