280 



THE OLD-WORLD ELK 



illustrations were his own. Like other writers 

 of that period he uses the word onager, or "wild 

 ass," as well as alces, to describe the elk. Certainly 

 the female in his picture has a suflficiently asinine 

 appearance to justify the name.^ The antlers 

 of his male elk seem to belong to the cactus 

 family. 



Long after Miinster and Aldrovandus, Rt.- 

 Rev. Erich Pontoppidan, ''bishop of Bergen in 

 Norway, and member of the Royal Academy of 

 Sciences at Copenhagen," in his Natural History of 

 Norway, describes and pictures the elk. "They 

 are very long-legged, " he writes, " insomuch that 

 a man may stand upright under their belly. 

 This was probably the largest land animal in Nor- 

 way. The largest creature in Norwegian waters, 

 according to Pontoppidan, was the sea serpent? 

 which he describes on the testimony of credible 

 witnesses as being 600 feet long, and which had 

 been seen to raise its head from the water as 

 high as the main-top of a ship." And yet the 

 learned bishop was not of a credulous disposi- 

 tion. He tells us so at considerable length in his 

 preface. 



9 Quadrupedum Omnium Bisulcorum Historia (Bonn, 162 1), p. 870, 

 ^ " Natural History oj Norway, translated from the Danish (London, 

 1755), part ii., p. 10. 

 " Part ii., p. 199. 



