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THE AMERICAN ELK. 
The American Elk, or Wapiti i^Cervus canadensis'), is 
about the largest of the typical Deer, Judge Caton describing 
one, which lived for some time in his park in Illinois, that 
stood sixteen hands high at the withers, and was estimated to 
weigh nine hundred pounds; the average weight, however, 
of a full-grown buck would probably not be over six hundred. 
The Wapiti ranged originally all over North America and a 
large part of Canada ; forty years ago a few were found in the 
mountains of Western Virginia and the wildest parts of New 
York, but civilization has gradually driven it, like the buffalo 
and the Indian, to a few fastnesses in the far West, where 
they yet make a stand before the final extermination which 
seems to inevitably await them. At the present time they 
range in small herds from the upper waters of the Missouri 
through the Yellowstone country westward to the Rocky 
mountains; they are found in fewer numbers South-west, in 
Texas, and a few are still left in the more secluded parts of 
