Elk

Elk (Alces machlis), the largest living species of the Deer family. It is a native of Arctic

America, where it is also called the Moose, and of northern Europe and Asia, though much more numerous in the western than in the eastern hemisphere, where its distribution has been much restricted since the days of Ceesar (De Bello Gall. vi. 27). An adult male stands about seven feet high at the shoulders, and has huge palmate aptlers, which form effective weapons of defence, and which have been known to weigh 40 lbs. The antlers appear first as straight bony projections when the animal is about nine months old, reaching their full length in the fifth year; and in each succeeding year till the fourteenth, when the animal is 'considered full-grown, they increase in breadth and add a fresh point to the broad, spreading margins. The females have no antlers. The coat is harsh and close-set, deep blackish-brown in colour, and forms a kind of a mane; the neck is short and thick, with a pendulous swelling covered with hair under the throat, just behind the angle of the jaw; the limbs are long, and the tail rudimentary. Their pace is generally a shambling trot, and their long legs enable them to get over the ground very quickly. In Sweden they were formerly trained to draw sledges, but this practice has long died out. They are, for the most part, solitary and very wary, so that moose-hunting, according to Sir John Richardson, is the greatest of an Indian's acquirements. They feed on bark and the shoots of bushes and trees. The skin makes excellent leather, and the flesh good venison, the tongue and the muffle, which is large and prominent, being specially prized. A few are still carefully preserved in Lithuania.