CHESUNCOOK. 
117 
high to the top of the back, and that one which he 
tried weighed eight hundred pounds. The length of 
the spinal projections between the shoulders is very 
great. A white hunter, who was the best authority 
/ 
among hunters that I could have, told me that the 
male was not eighteen inches taller than the female; 
yet he agreed that he was sometimes nine feet high to 
the top of the back, and weighed a thousand pounds. 
Only the male has horns, and they rise two feet or 
more above the shoulders, — spreading three or four, 
and sometimes six feet, — which would make him in 
all, sometimes, eleven feet high! According to this cal¬ 
culation, the moose is as tall, though it may not be as 
large, as the great Irish elk, Megaceros Hibernicus, of 
a former period, of which Mantell says that it “ very 
far exceeded in magnitude any living species, the skele¬ 
ton ” being “ upward of ten feet high from the ground 
to the highest point of the antlers.” Joe said, that, 
though the moose shed the whole horn annually, each 
new horn has an additional prong; but I have noticed 
that they sometimes have more prongs on one side 
than on the other. I was struck with the delicacy and 
tenderness of the hoofs, which divide very far up, and 
the one half could be pressed very much behind the 
other, thus probably making the animal surer-footed on 
the uneven ground and slippery moss-covered logs of 
the primitive forest. They were very unlike the stiff 
and battered feet of our horses and oxen. The bare, 
horny part of the fore-foot was just six inches long, 
and the two portions could be separated four inches at 
the extremities. 
The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to 
look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders ? 
