276 THE OLD-WORLD ELK 



other animals of various sorts, and that these 

 beasts, with looo gladiators, took part in the 

 games in the great arena. What part the ten elk 

 played in these gory spectacles Capitolinus does not 

 tell us. Whether they fought with horns or with 

 hoofs, against wild beasts or against equally savage 

 men, we have no means of knowing, but let us 

 hope that they gave a good account of themselves.^ 



In the fifth and sixth centuries of our era elk 

 were rare in France, and they disappeared entirely 

 before the tenth century. They disappeared in 

 South Germany in the ninth centur^% but presum- 

 ably were found on the lower Rhine somewhat 

 later, for prohibitions against elk hunting in 

 certain territory there were issued as late as 

 1025. Elk were found in Switzerland as late as 

 the Middle Ages.^ 



Beneath one of the picturesque houses, five 

 centuries old, for which Nuremberg is famous is a 

 restaurant occupying a quaint vaulted cellar,^ 

 and reached from the street by a long and steep 

 flight of stairs. I sat there on one occasion eating 

 my supper, and as I did so I studied a beautiful 

 carved elk head of wood, crowned by natural 

 antlers of moderate size, which graced the opposite 



s See also Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xii. 

 ^ Brockhaus, Konversations-Lexikon, under "Elentier." 

 ' The Nassauer Keller. 



