MISBELIEFS ABOUT THE ELK 



century before Pontoppidan's time Olaus Worm 

 described the animal as so large ^'ut sub ventre 

 ejus quis stare valeret^^ Worm referred also to the 

 elk's timidity, saying that he would die at once at 

 sight of his own blood, if even slightly wounded.^ 

 It was said too that when running fast in the 

 woods the elk carries his antlers in a horizontal 

 position, his nose raised in the air, and that at 

 such times he is unable to see the ground, and often 

 falls for this reason. But how many men ever 

 saw a moose fall when running, unless he was 

 overtaken by a bullet? The Chinese have a 

 familiar simile, lin chih chih, '*as sure-footed as an 

 elk, " and certainly the elk deserves the compliment. 

 Still another belief was to the effect that the elk 

 drinks much water, which is heated to the boiling 

 point in his stomach ; and that if pursued by dogs 

 he ejects this water at them, to drive them away.'® 

 "Among the peculiarities of this animal it may 

 especially be mentioned that when the ground is 

 very broken and soft he lies down, and seeks to 



' 8 See p. 280. Old German writers declared that next to the giraffe the 

 elk was the tallest of all species of deer. And it was a long time before 

 they discovered that the giraffe was not a deer at all. 



'"Timidum animal est, advenientes homines fugiens, quovis parvo 

 vulnere moritur, & si suum viderit sanguinem exanimatur." — Worm, 

 Museum Wormianuni (Amsterdam, 1655), p. 337. 



^oDahms, quoting Conrad Forer, Allgemeines Tierbuch, Frankfort, 

 1669. 



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