Moose

an American animal of the elk tribe. It is the largest living animal of the deer family. An adult male measures from five and one-half to seven feet at the shoulder, and attains a weight of a thousand or fifteen hundred pounds. The moose is larger than a horse. It is still found locally in swampy, evergreen forests from Maine to Washington and northwestward to Alaska. Sportsmen bring 250 moose out of Maine each season. No doubt as many more are killed by local hunters. The male may be recognized at once by a pair of magnificent spreading antlers with broad branches flattened into palms in a direction parallel to the sides of the head. A pair of antlers is likely to weigh forty or fifty pounds. An Alaskan moosehead hanging in the Field Columbian Museum at Chicago has the largest moose antlers on record. There are thirty-four tips. The greatest palm is sixteen inches wide and is over two inches thick. The total spread at the widest point is seventy-eight and one-half inches. The hair of the moose is of an iron-gray color. It is long, thick, and coarse. It lies like a thatch and is a perfect protection against sleet, rain, and cold. Each hair is a hollow tube, like that of the reindeer. So many tiny life preservers give the moose buoyancy in the water. An ornamental tufted, pouch-shaped fold of skin drops like a purse below the under jaw. It is from four to twelve inches long. The tail is a mere stump.

The legs are straight, clean and strong. They raise the body four feet clear of the ground. A moose can stride across a tangle of fallen tree trunks with the utmost ease and apparent air of indifference. When alarmed, it is capable of making off through a tangle of logs and evergreen growth at an incredible speed. Although it is as heavy as an ox, the moose is exceedingly fond of wading in sinking bogs. Hunters say it cannot be mired. In fly time it does not hesitate to plunge in where the most active horse would be lost, often sinking out of sight in boggy, springy places for the pure love of a bath, or diving to the bottom of a lake for a desired bite of lily root or other food.

The moose is not a grazing, but a browsing animal. It would die if required to feed on green grass. Twigs of hemlock, spruce, alder, poplar, birch, willow, and maple are its natural food. It gnaws off large pieces of bark also. In feeding it not infrequently stnaddles saplings and rides the tops down within reach. The animal's legs are so long that it is obliged to kneel to reach grass or ground mosses. In winter, like its relative, the reindeer, the moose digs holes in the snow to reach moss. In time of deep snow moose are apt to herd together, tramping down the snow and forming what hunters call moose pens. The moose is ordinarily an inoffensive animal; but, when enraged by a bullet wound or other provocation the bull charges with blind fury, and it is well to step out of the way. The cow moose has one calf each spring.

The various states and provinces have endeavored to save the moose from extermination. The season during which moose may be killed is limited to a few weeks in the autumn. The hunter is forbidden usually to kill more than one animal. Congress has made similar provisions for Alaska, but campers and Indians are hard to reach in far-off woods. It is a question whether the moose can survive. It does very well in large game preserves, but dies in small parks--apparently for the want of exercise requisite to digestion.

In his Maine Woods Thoreau gives some glimpses of moose ways. An old file of the Youths' Companion will be found to contain a large number of moose stories. It is to be regretted that there is no practicable way of saving the remnant of these animals from the hunter and the Indian.