XXXIl.] 
OF SELBORNE. 
99 
and from themselves also with respect to their proceedings by 
day, is a fact for which I am by no means able to account. 
I have somewhat to inform you of concerning the moose- 
deer ; but in general foreign animals fall seldom in my way ; 
my little intelligence is confined to the narrow sphere of my 
own observations at home. 
Selborne, Feb. 22, 1770. 
LETTER XXXII, 
TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 
On Michaelmas-day, 1768, I managed to get a sight of the 
female moose belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at Good- 
wood; but was greatly disappointed, when I arrived at the 
spot, to find that it died, after having appeared in a languishing 
way for some time, on the morning before. However, under- 
standing that it was not stripped, I proceeded to examine this 
rare quadruped : I found it in an old green-house, slung under 
the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture ; but, 
though it had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid 
a state that the stench was hardly supportable. The grand dis- 
tinction between this deer, and any other species that I have 
ever met with, consisted in the strange length of its legs ; on 
which it was tilted up much in the manner of the birds of 
the grallm order. I measured it, as they do an horse, and found 
that, from the ground to the wither, it was just five feet four 
inches, which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth 
that few horses arrive at : but then, with this length of legs, 
its neck was remarkably short, no more than twelve inches ; so 
that, by straddling with one foot forward and the other back- 
ward, it grazed on the plain ground, with the greatest difficulty, 
between its legs : the ears were vast and lopping, and as long as 
the neck ; the head was about twenty inches long, and ass-like ; 
and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw before, 
