suppose that this creature supports itself chiefly by browsing of
trees, and by wading after water-plants; towards which way of
livelihood the length of leg and great lip must contribute much. I
have read somewhere that it delights in eating the nymphaea, or
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 tibia, which was strangely
long; but in my haste to get out of the stench, I forgot to measure
that joint exactly. Its scut seemed to be about an inch long; the
colour 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 an 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 any commerce of the
amorous kind. I should have been glad to have examined the teeth,
tongue, lips, hoofs, etc., minutely; but the putrefaction precluded
all further curiosity. This animal, the keeper told me, seemed to
enjoy 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