The moose book : facts and stories from northern forests

Front matter

Moose Bcok

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Preface

The grand prize in the lottery of American sportsmanship is the moose. The domain of the giant deer stretches across the broad northland, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In this territorythousands of moose are taken every year; to it tens of thousands of hunters go annually, in the cool autumn days, rifle in hand, seeking health and recreation, and hoping that they too may win the chief prize of the chase. Meanwhile no book has been published which has been devoted exclusively to the history of the moose, his habits and habitat, and the methods of hunting him.

Much of the material contained In these pages was gathered during the hunting trips of many years in the best moose country of Eastern America. The experiences and views of many guides and many sportsmen, told beside the fires of many camps, jotted down at the time in little vestpocket note-books, and sifted and verified by personal observation, have found their places

IV

PREFACE here, together with the fruits of the author's own experience.

PubUshed works in various languages in which facts relating to the moose and his European kinsman are to be found have been carefully studied, and by free use of footnotes, citing authorities in every branch of the subject, the reader is given the bibliography of the moose and moose hunting. Most quotations from ancient writers are from the first editions, and the extracts conform closely in the use of capitals and punctuation marks, as well as in spelling, to the originals. In the extracts from old French writers the accents to which modern readers are accustomed are in many cases lacking. This lack is due to typographical carelessness in the ancient printing shops and not to oversight on the part of the present printers.

American writers have generally ignored the elk of the Old World, albeit the moose and the European elk are practically of the same species, and indistinguishable. Most of the facts given in these pages regarding the moose's European and Asiatic congener have been hitherto unpublished in English.

The author wishes to acknowledge obligation to Mr. Carl Rungius, who has kindly consented

PREFACE V

to the use of reproductions of four of his paintings, and to the American Museum of Natural History, Mr. Julian A. Dimock, and others who have courteously permitted the use of their pictures in these pages.

Cambridge, Mass.

June I, 1916.

Part I— The American Moose Chapter

I.— The Moose and His History. n. — American Range of the Moose HI.— Traits and Habits of the Moose IV. — Still-Hunting V. — Calling the Moose VI. — Miscellaneous Hunting Methods VII. — Arms and Equipment .

VIII. — Heads AND Horns IX. — Moose Meat as Food .

X. — The Future of the Moose .

XI. — The Names of the Moose XII.— The Moose in Indian Myth

PART II— THE OLD-WORLD ELK XI 1 1. — The Elk, Past and Present . XIV. — Range of the Elk in Europe and Asia

3 32

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CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XV.— Traits and Habits of the Elk XVI. — How THE Elk is Hunted XVn. — Antlers OF the Elk XVH I.— Misbeliefs about the Elk . Index .....

PAGE 300

334 346

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece

"Coming TO THE Call"

From a painting by Carl Rungius

Lescarbot's Moose ....

Game in New Netherland

In the Heart of the Moose Country

From a photograph by the author

Michigan's Heraldic Moose Present Range of Cervus Alces [map]

From a drawing by the author

An Alaska Moose ....

From a painting by Carl Rungius

MoosELEUK Mountain, Maine, from Munsungan Lake ....•••• From a photograph by the author

A 55-Inch New Brunswick Head.

An Unrecorded Tragedy .....

A Battle between Bulls

From a painting by Carl Rungius ix

PAGE

7"

29' 32'

Sv

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Calf Moose ......

From a photograph by Julian A. Dimock Skull of a Moose .....

From a drawing by the author

November in the Moose Woods

From a photograph by the author

Hunting against the Wind

Hunting with the Wind ....

Good Country FOR Calling.

Before the Battle .....

From a painting by Carl Rungius

Crust Hunting in the Seventeenth Century Bringing in a Good Specimen

A Guide and a Trophy ....

From a photograph by the author

Antlers in the Velvet ....

The Record Spread — 78^2 Inches

From a photograph

The Reed-McMillan Antlers

From a photograph

The Niedieck Antlers ....

From a drawing by the author

From the Canadian Rockies

PACK

88^

III 1 12

123 130

>39 144

• y

162^'

172*

177 >

178"

ILLUSTRATIONS

XI

Mr. Selous's Yukon Trophy

From a drawing by Carl Rungius

Cast Antlers Found in British Columbia

New Brunswick's Widest Spread

Manitoba's Best Head

Minnesota's Best Head

A 7 1 -Inch Head from Ontario .

F. H. Cook's New Brunswick Moose-head

Measurement of Moose Antlers

A Head cannot be Judged by Spread alone

From a drawing by Carl Rungius

A Hungarian Design .....

From a drawing by the author

A Moosehorn Napkin Ring.

Dewclaw Bones of Moose ....

Trophies Brought TO Camp.

An Old Logging Camp, ....

A Logging Camp in the New Brunswick Woods The Moose in Politics ....

Restoration of Irish Elk ....

From a drawing by Charles R. Knight A Vista in the Moose Country .

PAGB 182

184 184 184 185 188 190

>93

199'

232 232 234 244 xu

ILLUSTRATIONS

Good Moose Cover ....

Hunting Russian Elk

From a painting by Richard Friese

An Elk Drive .....

From a painting by K. Wysotzki

An Asiatic Rock-Carving .

The Elk According to Munster (1554) Aldrovandus's Female Elk (1621) Head of Male Elk (Aldrovandus, 162 i) Buffon's Elk .....

Sledge Drawn by Elk (Magnus, 1555) Brought to Bay ....

From a drawing by A. Erikson

A Scandinavian Poacher's Device

A Peculiar Siberian Type .

Fossil Antlers from Russian Poland

Best Elk Antlers at the Vienna Exhibition

An Eight-Year-Old from Livonia

Antlers of an Old Elk

Alces Bedfordi/E ....

Elk Attacked by Epilepsy (Pomet, 1735)

, 1910

257 271

273/

278-'

283'

321^

335 336

338 340 341 344 349

THE MOOSE BOOK

Parti

Chapter I

In a plea for the preservation of the moose Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the New York Zoological Society, has said, "Nature has been a million years in developing that wonderful animal, and man should not ruthlessly destroy it!"

A million years ! The imagination is helpless in attempting to grasp the idea of such a period of time, and the events which have taken place in it.

The ancestral home of the moose {Cervus alces) in prehistoric times was probably in Asia. Professor Osborn quotes Sir Victor Brooke as maintaining that the Cervidce originated in Asia, and thence spread east and west.' But at just what stage in this little matter of a million years the first moose wandered into America over the land

» The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia, and North America (New York, 1910), p. 418.

which then connected the two continents at Bering Strait, we shall never know. According to Professor William Berryman Scott of Princeton University the moose, the caribou, and the wapiti came from the Old World to the New not earlier than the Pleistocene.'' The moose seems to have preceded the caribou and the wapiti in the long migration. At any rate, the moose was present on the western half of the continent in the later Pleistocene, when the Glacial Era was drawing to a close.^ The ancestors of the white-tailed or Virginia deer doubtless came from the same far-away Asiatic home, but in an earlier geologic age. How far south the moose ranged at that early day is not known, but his fossil remains are said to have been found south of the Ohio and Missouri rivers.'*

'A Hi tory of Land Mammals in the Western Hemisphere (New York, 1913), p. 413.

3 Ibid., p. 202. Geologists variously estimate the period which has elapsed since the Pleistocene as from 100,000 to 200,000 years. Those of us who carry split-second watches will wonder at the inability of the geologists to measure time with more precision.

* Osbom, ubi supra, p. 449. Professor Osborn (pp. 471-472) mentions fossil bones of "Alces^' as found in southern South Carolina. He cites as an authority Francis S. Holmes in the American Journal of Science, 1858, pp. 442-443, and in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences, 1859, pp. 177-185. But Professor Holmes in his list names the "elk" as represented among the fossil remains, meaning, no doubt, the American elk, or wapiti {Cervus canadensis), not the European elk, or moose {Cervus alces or Alces americanus). This is an instance of the confusion which has been entailed by the misnaming of the wapiti by the early settlers in America. See p. 237.

It Is impossible to say what European traveler in North America first encountered the moose. The earhest explorers on this continent were not sportsmen; they knew little about the deer of Europe, and were untrained as writers. As a result they have left us meager Information relating to the characteristics or the numbers of the various species of deer which they found in their travels.

Jacques Cartier, who explored the valley of the St. Lawrence In 1535, and spent the winter there, mentions various wild beasts which the Indians hunted. Including "dains" and "cerfz.*'^ Hiram B. Stephens, B.C.L., translates dains by the word "moose," but expresses doubt of the identity of the animal.^ In several other places Cartier mentions "Cerfz iff Dains," and tells how he bought the meat of these animals from the Indians In the winter for his men, who were dying of scurvy, and were unable to hunt. As the Indian equivalents of these words he gives " Aiounesta y Asquenoudoy" but these words are not to be found in any of the Indian word-lists of other writers. There is little reason to doubt, however, that one

s Narration de la Navigation faite en MDXXX V et MDXXX VI par Le Capilaine Jacques Cartier aux lies de Canada, Ilochelaga, Saguenay et autres, fol. 31.

^ Jacques Cartier andHis Four Voyagesto Canada (Montreal, i89o),p. 71.

or the other was the moose, for the great captain bought his winter store of meat from the Indians, and the Indians of that region depended largely on the moose for their own subsistence.

Champlain in 1603, and Lescarbot a year or two later, visited "New France," and both left valuable accounts of the country, its inhabitants and its fauna. Both explorers adopted the Basque word orenac when referring to the moose, and both seemed to recognize the animal as identical with the elk of Europe.

In The Savages, or Voyage of Sleur de Champlain made in the Year 1603, Champlain mentions " orignacs" first in a list of twelve species of animals on which the savages of the St. Lawrence Valley subsisted. A year later, telling of his exploration of the lower Kennebec, he describes the winter hunting of the aborigines. On snowshoes, with "filling" of moose hide, dressed in skins of beaver and moose, men, women, and children, armed with bows and spears, would take the trail into the moose country, in quest of their winter's store of food.^

Marc Lescarbot of Paris, historian of New

? " Durant I'hyver aufort des neges Us vont chasser aux eslans, &" autres bestes, dequoy Us vivent la plus-part du temps.'' — Les Voyages de la Nouvelle Fra7ice Occidentale, dicte Canada (Paris, 1632), p. 71. Les Voyages du Sieur de Champlain (Paris, 1613), pp. 56-57.

France, lawyer, poet, and Huguenot sympathiser, spent some time with de Monts' colony in Acadia.

Lescarbot's Moose

On his map of Port Royal (AnnapoHs Basin, Nova Scotia), he shows *' Rliviere] de I'Orignac." This is represented on recent maps under the name of Moose River. It is a short and insignificant stream when the tide is out, but twice a day.

thanks to the extraordinary tidal action in the Bay of Fundy, it is capable of floating vessels of considerable size. Indeed, shipbuilding on a respectable scale has been carried on along its banks.

This map is entitled ''Figure du Port Royal en la Nouvelle France, par Marc Lescarbot, i6og** On its lower margin, close to the river which was named in its honor, stands a moose. This is probably the earliest picture of the American moose which has come down to us.

" First let us speak of the elk, '* writes Lescarbot, "which they [the Indians] call Jptaptou, and our Basques Orignac. ... It is the most abundant food which the savages have, except fish."^

Lescarbot describes a winter hunting trip of the savages, when with their dogs they sought out the moose, helpless by reason of the deep snow on which crust had formed. "We made a very luxurious repast with this tender venison," he writes. "After the roast we had soup, quickly prepared in abundance by a savage who made a trough with his ax, from the trunk of a tree, in which he stewed the meat. . . . This was accom-

* " Premilrement parlons de I' Elian lequel Us appellent Aptaptou, fif noz Basques Orignac. . . . Cest la plus ahondante manne qu'ayent les Sauvages apres le poisson." — Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle France (Paris, 1609), p. 811.

pllshed by putting stones, brought to a red heat in the fire, into the trough, and renewing them until the meat was cooked. Joseph Acosta says that the savages of Peru do the same thing."^

An Indian banquet which Champlain witnessed near the mouth of the Saguenay he thus described: "After he had finished his speech we left his cabin, and they began their tabagie or feast, which they make with the flesh of the orignac (which is like beef), the bear, seals, and beavers, which are their most common meats, and game birds in quantity. They had eight or ten kettles, full of meat, in the cabin. These were some six paces from each other, and each with its own fire."

The guests were seated on two sides of the cabin, each having his own bark dish. Champlain was not favorably impressed by the table manners of the Indians. "They eat in a very filthy manner," he wrote, "for when their hands are greasy they wipe them on their hair, or on their dogs, of which they keep many for hunting."'"

Some years later Nicolas Denys, who lived among the Indians of Acadia, described the Indian method of making kettles. Huge fallen trees

» Uhi supra, p. 813.

" Des Sauvages, ou, Voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouage, faict en la France nouvelle, Van mil six cens trois (Paris, 1604), fol. 4.

were utilized, the upper surface being leveled off, and a trough-like excavation made by the use of fire and stone axes. These kettles, laboriously made, determined the places of their camps, until the white men brought iron kettles, which could be easily carried on their journeys."

Until the introduction of gunpowder the American Indian was practically on even terms with the European hunter in respect to weapons for the chase. He still used stone, or pointed bones, instead of metal, for the heads of his spears and arrows, but his cleverness in fashioning barbed spear heads and arrow heads, with wonderfully sharp edges, from flint, and in fixing them to the shafts, cannot be equaled by the men of today.

Many of the Old-World hunters had replaced the long-bow by the cross-bow, and some had supplanted both by the arquebus, at the time when the Old World and the New first met. But the efl^ective range of the early firearms was wofully short. According to Greener, **a reliable match decided at Pacton Green, Cumberland, in August, 1792, resulted in a grand victory for the bow. The distance was one hundred yards, the bow placing

" Description Geographique et Historique des Costes de VAmhique Septentrionale (Paris, 1672), vol. ii., p. 359.

THE MOOSE AND HIS HISTORY ii

sixteen arrows out of twenty into the target, and the ordinary musket twelve balls only."'''

The Indian's bow was not so long as the Englishman's, but he was very skilled in its use. Denys wrote from Acadia in 1672 that its effective range against moose was forty-five or fifty paces, '^ a range which offered less difficulty to the stealthy, soft-footed Indian than to us who are accustomed to walk on city pavements.

The snares and pitfalls devised by the Indians, and the barriers erected to guide driven game into slaughter pens, as described by the earliest European visitors to America, show a marked resemblance to the contrivances in use for the same purposes in medieval Europe. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we need not wonder if similar necessities produced similar inventions.

The narratives of the earliest European explorers in America are given in the great folios which Samuel Purchas published in 1625 under the title Purchas His Pilgrimes. Quoting Sir Ferdinando Gorges he thus describes the moose:

"There is also a certaine Beast, that the Natives call a Mosse, hee is as big bodied as an Oxe. . . . His taile is longer then the Single''* of a Deere,

'' The Gun and Its Development, sixth edition (1897), p. 12.

'3 Ubi supra, vol. ii., pp. 420-423. '•< The tail of a buck.

and reacheth almost downe to his Huxens.** . . . There have beene many of them seene in a great Hand upon the Coast, called by our people Mount Mans ell, ^^ whither the Savages goe at certaine seasons to hunt them [by driving into the water]. . . . And there is hope that this kind of Beasts may be made serviceable for ordinary labour, with Art and Industry."'^

At the time of its publication in 1634 William Wood's Nezv Englands Prospect was the most complete account of New England, its climate, soil, fauna, etc., which had been written. The author had spent four years in the Colony. He wrote in a light vein, possessed a lively imagination, and sometimes dropped into verse, his enumeration of the beasts of the country being in the following lines:

The kingly Lyon, and the strong arvid Beare The large lirnd Mooses, with the tripping Deare, Quill darting Porcupines, and Rackcoones bee, Castelld in the hollow of an aged tree;

»« Hock. ** Mount Desert Island.

'' Purchas His Pilgrimes (London, 1625), tenth book, "English Discoveries and Plantations in New England and New-found-land," chap. i. Gorges, A Brief Relation of the Discovery and Plantation of New England (London, 1622), pp. 26-27. An earlier mention of the moose by this name — perhaps the earliest in any book — appears in the edition of 'PuTcha.s's Pilgrimage published in 1614, p. 755: "Captaine Thomas Hanham sayled to the Riuer of Sagadahoc 1606. He relateth of their beasts . . . redde Deare, and a beast bigger, called the Mus."

gulfe.

*The beast called a Moose," he explains, "is not much unlike red Deare, this beast is as bigge as an Oxe; slow of foote, headed like a Bucke, with a broade beame, some being two yards wide in the head, their flesh is as good as Beefe, their hides good for cloathing; The English have some thoughts of keeping them tame, and to accustome them to the yoake, which will be a great commoditie : First because they are so fruitfull, bringing forth three at a time, being likewise very uberous. Secondly, because they will live in winter without any fodder. There be not many of these in the Massachusets hay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them; These pore beasts likewise are much devoured by the Woolves/' Thomas Morton, the gay roysterer of Merry

«» Ramparted. 19 Part i., chap. vi.

Mount, who was devoted to hunting, described New England and its resources in his New English Canaan. Morton wrote "upon tenne yeares knowledge and experiment of the Country." In the fifth chapter of his second book, "Of the Beasts of the forrest, " he describes three kinds of deer.

"First, therefore I will speake of the Elke, which the Salvages call a Mose: it is a very large Deare, with a very faire head, and a broade palme, like the palme of a fallow Deares home, but much bigger, and is 6. footewide betweene the tipps, which grow curbing downwards: Hee is of the bignesse of a great horse.

"There have bin of them, scene that has bin i8. handfulls highe: hee hath a bunch of haire under his jawes: he is not swifte, but stronge and large in body, and longe legged; in somuch that hee doth use to kneele, when hee feedeth on grasse.

"Hee bringeth forth three faunes, or younge ones, at a time; and being made tame, would be good for draught, and more usefull (by reason of their strength) then the Elke of Raushea. These are found very frequent, in the northerne parts of New England, their flesh is very good foode, and much better then our redd Deare of England.

"Their bids are by the Salyages converted into very good lether, and dressed as white as milke.

"Of this lether, the Salvages make the best shooes, and use to barter away the sklnnes to other Salvages, that have none of that kinde of bests in the parts where they live. Very good buffe may be made of the bids, I have seene a hide as large as any horse hide that can be found. There is such abundance of them that the Salvages, at hunting time, have killed of them so many, that they have bestowed six or seaven at a time, upon one English man whome they have borne affection to."^°

With the establishment of the Jesuit missions in New France in 161 1 a new class of writers began making contributions to the history of the moose. The missionaries in their Relations, or reports of the events in their forest parishes sent from year to year to their superiors in the old country, make frequent mention of the animal which they call I'elan or rorignal. Like the Indians, the priests were dependent on the moose for food in winter, and like the Indians they went hungry when for lack of deep crusted snow the hunters with their primitive weapons were unable to

«o New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637), pjj. 74-75. Morton was a lawyer of Clifford's Inn, London. His unpuritanical conduct twice entailed banishment from New England, and after the publication of his "scandalous book" his return to Boston brought him a year in prison.

I6 THE Ah4ERICAhI MOOSE

capture game. Often they tell of sustaining life by eating acorns, lichens, and remnants of moose skin, because the hunt had failed.^^

"The snow not being deep, as in other years," wrote Fr. Bressani, an Italian missionary, in 1653, **they could not take the great beasts ['gran bestie,* moose,] but only some beavers or porcupines. . . . An eelskin was deemed a sumptuous supper; I had used one for mending my robe, but hunger obliged me to unstitch and eat it. We ate the dressed skins of the great beast, though tougher than that of the eels. I would go into the woods to gnaw the tenderest part of the trees, and the softer bark. . . . The snow came toward the end of January, and our hunters captured some great beasts, and smoked their flesh, so much that it became as hard as a stick of wood." . . . Meanwhile some of the Indians in the neighborhood died of starvation."

The Indians were the principal hunters of moose, though it was recorded that "many of our Frenchmen have killed thirty or forty apiece."^^ The skins were an important article of commerce, and at Tadousac, a trading post at the mouth

»i Jesuit Relations (Cleveland, 1899), vol. Iv, (1670-71), pp. 151- 153; vol. xxxvii., pp. 193-195.

of the Saguenay, more than five hundred moose skins were handled in the way of trade in 1648.^* This of course did not include the many used by the savages in making their clothing.^^

Several writers suggested the possibility of domesticating the moose, hoping thus to avoid some of the hardships of their long journeys to the distant missions. Fr. Le Jeune, superior of the "Residence of Kebec," wrote in 1636 that the French Governor had two bull moose and one cow in captivity, which he was seeking to domesticate.^* The experiment was evidently a failure, for no further mention of the captives is made.

Many accounts are given of the Indian feasts. These functions were frequent, and varied in character, but the gluttony of the red men in times of plenty, and the disregard of rules of cleanliness in preparing the food, make the savage banquets seem anything but attractive.

Each guest took with him to the feast his own bark dish and wooden spoon. The choicer por-

'* Jes. Rel., vol. xxxii., p. 103.

's A good description of the moose-skin garments of the Indians is given by Fr. Le Jcune, writing in 1634-35. See Jes. Rel., vol. vii., pp. 15-17. The skin of the moose as material for clothing was valued by the white man also. Alexander Bradford of Dorchester, Mass., by his will, proved in 1645, bequeathed a "Moose Suite & a musket & Sworde & bandilieres & vest." (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. iii. [1849], p. 82.)

tions were not divided. The tongue of a moose would be given to a single person, the tail and head of a beaver to another. These were the best pieces, and were called "the captain's part." "As for the fat intestines of the moose, which are their great delicacies, they usually roast them, and let every one taste them, as also another dish which they hold in high esteem, namely, the large intestine of the beast filled with grease, and roasted, fastened to a cord, hanging and turning before the fire."^^

In seasons of plenty some of the meat would be dried and smoked for future use. As a preliminary the juice would be forced out, as far as possible, by pounding with stones and trampling with the feet. Whole sides of moose would be dried at once, the bones being removed, and where the masses of flesh were thick, deep slashes would be cut to enable the smoke to penetrate.^* The missionaries speak often of eating this dried

'7 Fr. Le Jeune, writing in 1634. See Jes. Rel., vol. vi., p. 281.

»* Ibid., vol. vi., p. 297. The dried meat of the western country is first cut into thin strips, and is seasoned with pepper and salt. The strips are laid for drjnng on a framework of poles about four feet from the ground, and a slow fire, preferably of black birch, furnishes heat and smoke for the curing process. When required for use the meat is pounded fine and made into soup, but it may be eaten dry. This sort of meat is commonly called "jerky" — a corruption of "char qui," a Peruvian word meaning dried meat. — See Kephart, Book of Camping and Woodcraft (N. Y., 1906), p. 222.

meat, but none of them have any compHments to waste on it. It was hard and tasteless — but it would support life.

The savages made no use of salt in their food, and vegetables and cereals were often lacking. The sole dish at many of their tabagies, or feasts, was an unseasoned stew into which were thrown masses of any meat that happened to be at hand, without regard to any culinary rules.

In a vellum-bound folio, profusely illustrated with steel-plate engravings, Arnoldus Montanus told the people of Holland in the seventeenth century of the wonders of the two Americas. His book is entitled The New and Unknown World; or Description of America and the Southern Land.^^ It was published in Amsterdam in 1671. A translation of Montanus's Description of New Netherland is given in O'Callaghan's Documentary History of the State of New York?"" New Netherland, according to the Dutch writer, was bounded by Virginia on the southwest, by New England on the northeast, by the ocean on the southeast, and by the River Canada (St. Lawrence) on the

»9 De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld: of Beschryving van America en 't Zuid-land.

30 Published in Albany, 1851; see vol. iv., pp. 75-83. 2 north, while "northwesterly, inland, it remains wholly unknown."

"South of New Netherland," writes Montanus, "are found numerous elks (eelanden), animals which, according to Erasmus Stella,^^ constitute

Game in New Netherland

a middle class between horses and deer. They appear to derive their Dutch appellation from elende (misery), because they die of the smallest wound, however strong they may otherwise be; also, because they are frequently afflicted with epilepsy. . . . When hunted they spew hot water

" Stella wrote, in Latin, early in the sixteenth century, of the elk of Prussia.

out on the dogs. They possess great strength of hoof, so as to strike a wolf dead at a blow. Their flesh, either fresh or salted, is very nutritious; the hoofs cure the falling sickness."

Montanus was evidently writing of the moose, which is the elk of Europe, but he was clearly at fault in placing the habitat of the moose south of New Netherland. His plate, showing some of the wild animals of New Netherland, is reproduced herewith. In it are shown the moose, the unicorn (which Montanus said was found "on the borders of Canada"), and a great blood-drinking eagle. A beaver, in the foreground of the picture, seems to be amused at the company in which he finds himself.

John Josselyn, an English physician, the son of a baronet, who made two extended visits to New England in the seventeenth century, spending much of his time in what is now Maine, has left us a description of the moose.