282 



THE OLD-WORLD ELK 



Brandenburger killed 300 years ago. Dr. Paul 

 Dahms of Dantzic states that the heaviest elk in 

 Johann Sigismund's ample game bag weighed 

 530 kg. (1166 pounds) when killed in 1618, and 

 that elk as heavy as this are now not uncommon 

 in Europe. 



Buffon, the eminent French naturalist, had 

 little chance to study the elk, although friends in 

 America sent him moose antlers, skeletons, and 

 skins. In March, 1784, however, he had an 

 opportunity to study and picture a living elk 

 which was exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, 

 near Paris. This animal was taken, the showman 

 said, fifty leagues beyond Moscow, and was less 

 than three years old at the time when Buffon saw 

 him. 



The naturalist had a steel engraving of this elk 

 made to illustrate his Natural History. He ex- 

 plains the strange position of the horns with ref- 

 erence to the head — without, however, being 

 conscious that an explanation was needed — when he 

 says that the picture was made in March, and that 

 the horns had been cast early in the previous 

 January. The honest showman declared that the 

 cast antlers were those of this two-year-old elk, 



^^"Ehemalige Verbreitung, Aussterben, und Volkskundliche Bezieh' 

 ungen des Elches in Westpreussen, " in Globus, a magazine of geography 

 and ethnology, vol. Ixxiv., p. 243 (Brunswick, Germany, Oct. 15, 1898). 



