THE ELK, PAST AND PRESENT 



285 



bility, which a steel breastplate would not possess* 

 Gustavus Adolphus wore a doublet of elk skin at 

 the battle of Liitzen in 1632, and the garment 

 is now displayed in the museum of the artillery 

 arsenal in Vienna. Unfortunately for the Swedish 

 king, however, the leather failed to stop an Im- 

 perialist bullet, and the great soldier died in the 

 moment of victory. 



Paul I., Czar of Russia, in the closing years of the 

 eighteenth century ordered that his cavalry be 

 equipped with elk-skin breeches, in consequence 

 of which a relentless war was waged on the elk 

 of some portions of the empire. To this fact is 

 ascribed the extermination of the elk in Poland.'^ 



The people of the Amur district of eastern 

 Siberia were in ancient times required to pay 

 tribute to the Chinese in elk skins, and Russia 

 more recently required tribute in this material to 

 be paid by subjugated Asiatic peoples. Russia 

 in turn was on some occasions compelled to pay 

 war indemnity to Austria, not in money, but by 

 delivering many hundred wagon-loads of the skins 

 of elk.'^ In fact, the elk's jacket was his one 

 possession which the European trader formerly 



Dahms, Globus, vol. Ixxiv., p. 221 (Oct. 8, 1898). 

 '7 Prof. Wilhelm Blasius, in Dombrowski's AUgemeine Encyklopddie 

 der Forst- und Jagdwissenschaften (Vienna, 1888), vol. iii., p. 275. 



