388 
NOTES TO THE 
exception to their coarse fare seems to be the leaves and ten- 
drils of the yellow pond lily, in search of which delicacy, as 
mentioned by White, it spends much of its time in summer in 
wading by lake shores, as well as for the purpose of escaping 
its swarms of tormentors, the mosquitoes and great breeze flies. 
It is a frequenter of lake districts at all times, affecting low-lying 
fir and spruce forests interspersed with long juicy swamps, where 
the animal treads deeply and noiselessly on a soft cushion of 
sphagnum moss. Consequently, as White remarks in Letter 
XXXVI., it is a great swimmer, and may be frequently seen in 
the water crossing to and from islands. The latter localities are 
frequently chosen by the females to bring up their young. 
Such habits, and the power which it possesses of maintaining 
a long submergence beneath the surface whilst feeding on water 
lily tendrils, lia,ve doubtless given origin to the Indian tales of 
moose coming from the sea and their resorting to it again in 
times of great persecution, as well as to the repeated assertion 
of native hunters that the animal can completely hide himself 
from his pursuers in a lake or pond. The immense aperture of 
the nostril is certainly capable of being contracted, perhaps even 
to closing, by the flexible muscular and overhanging upper 
ridge. In Korway, also, as mentioned by the Eev. Mr. Barnard, 
its aquatic habits have given rise to similar legends about the 
European elk.^ 
The great length of leg of the moose, which Mr. White speaks 
of as constituting the great distinction between it and all other 
deer he had ever met with, seems to be due, according to Pro- 
fessor Owen, to the peculiar length of tlie cannon bones. This 
peculiarity, combined with shortness of neck (generally about 
the same length as the head from the base of the ear to the 
extremity of the mouffle), prevents the animal from grazing as 
other deer, or picking up anything from the ground with its long 
prehensile, tapir-like upper lip without difficulty, and by widely 
straddling its fore-legs. Seen probably in this attitude by him- 
self or his followers, Caesar, in his Commentaries, describes 
the elk of the great Hercynian forest of ancient Germany as 
jointless — hunted by weakening trees, so that the animal, leaning 
against them, would break them down and ensure his own fall. 
Despite the frequent assertions to be found in works of natural 
history concerning the ungainliness of gait and appearance of 
the elk, I am convinced that a nobler animal does not exist in 
the fir forests of either Europe or America, and that associated 
as it is with their grand solitudes, there is no form more entitled 
^ "Sport in Norway, p. 154. 
