sh which
would fold up conveniently to six inches. All this pains I took because I
did not wish to be obliged to say merely that the moose was very large. Of
the various dimensions which I obtained I will mention only two. The
distance from the tips of the hoofs of the fore-feet, stretched out, to
the top of the back between the shoulders, was seven feet and five inches.
I can hardly believe my own measure, for this is about two feet greater
than the height of a tall horse. The extreme length was eight feet and two
inches. Another cow-moose, which I have since measured in those woods with
a tape, was just six feet from the tip of the hoof to the shoulders, and
eight feet long as she lay.

When afterward I asked an Indian at the carry how much taller the male
was, he answered, "Eighteen inches," and made me observe the height of a
cross-stake over the fire, more than four feet from the ground, to give
me some idea of the depth of his chest. Another Indian, at Oldtown, told
me that they were nine feet high to the top of the back, and that one
which he tried weighed eight hundred pounds. The length of the spinal
projections between the shoulders is very great. A white hunter, who was
the best authority among hunters that I could have, told me that the male
was _not_ eighteen inches taller than the female; yet he agreed that he
was sometimes nine feet high to the top of the back, and weighed a
thousand pounds. Only the male has horns, and they rise two feet or more
above the shoulders,--spreading three or four, and sometimes six feet,--
which would make him in all, sometimes, eleven feet high! According to
this calculation, the moose is as tall, though it may not be as large, as
the great Irish elk, Megaceros Hibernicus, of a former period, of which
Mantell says that it "very far exceeded in magnitude any living species,
the skeleton" being "upward of ten feet high from the ground to the
highest point of the antlers." Joe said, that, though the moose shed the
whole horn annually, each new horn has an additional prong; but I have
noticed that they sometimes have more prongs on one side than on the
other. I was struck with the delicacy and tenderness of the hoofs, which
divide very far up, and the one half could be pressed very much behind the
other, thus probably making the animal surer-footed on the uneven ground
and slippery moss-covered logs of the primitive forest. They were very
unlike the stiff and battered feet of our