The moose likes the succulent water plants it finds at the bottom of
lakes and sluggish streams, and often when reaching for them becomes
completely submerged.]
The wealth of animal life found by our forebears was one of the great
natural resources of the New World. Although freely drawn upon from
the first, the stock was but little depleted up to within a century.
During the last one hundred years, however, the rapidly increasing
occupation of the continent and other causes, together with a
steadily increasing commercial demand for animal products, have had
an appalling effect. The buffalo, elk, and antelope are reduced to a
pitiful fraction of their former countless numbers.
[Illustration: