SELBORNE, _March_, 1770.
On Michaelmas Day, 1768, I managed to get a sight of the female moose
belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at Goodwood; but was greatly
disappointed, when I arrived at the spot, to find that it died, after
having appeared in a languishing way for some time, on the morning
before. However, understanding that it was not stripped, I proceeded to
examine this rare quadruped; I found it in an old greenhouse, slung under
the belly and chin by ropes, and in a standing posture; but, though it
had been dead for so short a time, it was in so putrid a state that the
stench was hardly supportable. The grand distinction between this deer,
and any other species that I have ever met with, consisted in the strange
length of its legs, on which it was tilted up much in the manner of the
birds of the _gralloe_ order. I measured it, as they do a horse, and
found that, from the ground to the withers, it was just five feet four
inches, which height answers exactly to sixteen hands, a growth that few
horses arrive at: but then, with this length of legs, its neck was
remarkably short, no more than twelve inches; so that, by straddling with
one foot forward and the other backward, it grazed on the plain ground,
with the greatest difficulty, between its legs; the ears were vast and
lopping, and as long as the neck; the head was about twenty inches long,
and ass-like, and had such a redundancy of upper lip as I never saw
before, with huge nostrils. This lip, travellers say, is esteemed a
dainty dish in North America. It is very reasonable to 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 legs
and great lip must contribute much. I have read somewhere that it
delights in eating the _nymphoea_, 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
a 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 farther 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 European elk are
the same creature.