70 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
towards which way of livelihood the length of its legs and great 
lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that it de- 
lights in eating the water-lily. From the fore-feet to the belly 
behind the shoulder it measured three feet and eight inches ; 
the length of the legs before and behind consisted a great deal 
in the “za, which was strangely long. Its scut seemed to be 
about an inch long; the color was a grizzly black; the mane 
about four inches long; the fore-hoofs were upright and 
shapely, the hind flat and splayed. The spring before it was 
only two years old, so that most probably it was not then come 
to its growth. What a vast tall beast must a full-grown stag 
be! I have been told some arrive at ten feet and a half! 
This poor creature had at first a female companion. of the 
same species, which died the spring before. In the same 
garden was a young stag, or red deer, between whom and 
this moose it was hoped that there might have been a breed ; 
but their inequality of height must have always been a bar to 
such a hope. ‘This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to en- 
joy itself best in the extreme frost of the former winter. In 
the house they showed me the horn of a male moose, which 
had no front antlers, but only a broad palm with some snags 
on the edge. The noble owner of the dead moose proposed 
to make a skeleton of her bones. 
Please to let me hear if my female moose corresponds with 
that you saw; and whether you think still that the American 
moose and European elk are the same creature. 
LETTER XXIX. 
SELBORNE, Jay rath, 1770. 
Last month we had such a series of cold turbulent weather, 
such a constant succession of frost, and snow, and hail, and 
tempest, that the regular migration or appearance of the 
