Among the more important animals treated of in these widely
various papers (which are almost all well written), are those on the buffalo, now nearly extinct in its wild state; and those on the Polar bear and the musk-ox, furnished by Serjeatat Long and Mr. Biederbeck, survivors of the Greely Arctic Expedition, "who hunted and largely subsisted on these and other wild animals while battling with icebergs, starva- tion, and death in the frozen North." The editor gives an interesting account of that mysterious habitant of the snowy cliffs, the Rocky Mountain goat, known to no man so well as to Mr. Shields, who has lived half a lifetime beneath the shadows of its alpine home, and has slaughtered the animal in greater numbers than have fallen to the gun of any other among its persecutors.
It is several years since the late Lord Milton told his wild tide of the Assiniboine River, the tribes of the Rockies, and the grizzlies, and shocked us by the story of his finding an Indian, dead of hunger, sitting by the ashes of a leng- es tinguished fire in the depths of a forest until then lin- trodden by the white man. In the course of that narrative, lie made us acquainted with the ways and manners of the fierce, cunning, deadly-persistent, because always half-starved, wolverine, or American glutton, and we do not remember since to have read anything about this latter. Mr. Cooper's monograph of the curious creature, which has been virtually exterminated within the borders of the United States (its habits being predatory and its fur beautiful), gives an in- teresting impression of its sagacity, especially of its being "up to trap" to an extent that frequently defeats the most ex- perienced voyageur. Its ravages, in the region to which it is now confined, that of tilt boreal "solitude where none in- trudes," must be appalling, for the careajon (wolverine) well deserves the common characteristic name of the European variety, that of " glutton."
There is something pathetic about all the deer tribe—pro- bably they owe this to Shakespeare's Duke in Arden and the melancholy Jaques—and especially about the moose, that big, shambling, top-heavy, ungainly, harmless creature (of tremendously old family), who is the most timid of them all. An old-world poetry marks the places where the moose is found, peacefully browsing on primeval branches and nibbling at the roots of water-lilies, far away in Idaho, along the course of the Clear Water River which has its source in the Bitter Root Range of mountains. There, and also in the forests of Maine, the big herbivorous animals exist in great numbers, and in comparative safety. The gold-hunters pass, in their excursions, through the silent wilderness ; but they go and come without disturbing the big deer, and so rugged are the rocky cartons of these mountains, that hunters seldom penetrate to the region of lakes beyond the summit. The moose The Big Gone of North. Antoricu. By timorous Writers, Editod by G. 0. Ma& Ooquinft "). Loudon: SmnpRon Low and Co.
do nob migrate from these secure places in herds, as they do from the more barren regions farther south, and so keep out of the way of hunting-man, except he be endowed with exceptional pluck and perseverance in the dear delight of blood-spilling. The moose is a great hand at hiding, and will so skilfully confound his dark outlines with those of the dim forest, that he often baffles the hunter's sight and disappoints his appetite (for the creature is good to eat); he can be savage, too, although his discretion is more salient than his valour, and the female is a most courageous mother, effectually guarding her young from beasts of prey. "She will drive wolves, bears, and mountain lions in disorder from the field. When a man approaches the secluded bedding-ground, the mother silently steals away. She leaves the helpless young to - hide in the ferns or chaparral ;. and well it bides, too. At the signal of the departing mother-moose, who caresses it with her nose, and maybe breathes her 'God bless you in its ear, the little creature becomes, in looks, a part of its surroundings, and the hunter might step over it as a lifeless, moss-covered stone or piece of wood." The writer tells an exciting story of his fighting with a Western moose in snow seven feet deep, "when," he adds, "it was more good fortune than any advan- tage I had, that saved me from being out to pieces by his feet."
The elk is still found in the Yellowstone National Park, and in the Cascade and Rocky Ranges. The herds leave the foot-hills in May for the greater heights, and take up their ground as near the snow-line as possible without getting beyond the timber-line. The beautiful creatures march, at a stately walking pace, in perfect order, and with unbroken discipline, the bulls in advance, the cows and fawns
in the centre, the spike-bucks (two-year-olds) in—the rear. The band always acknowledges one leader, the largest and strongest bull in the herd. "Should this leader be shot," says the writer, "the band falls into hopeless confusion." The
Indian hunters will follow on the trail of a band day after day until an opportunity of shooting the leader offers ; then the others fall victims one by one. The elk tribe does not feed at night, as other deer do ; but the bands are stirring with the earliest dawn. Here is a pretty picture of their ways ;—
"Nothing can exceed the beauty of the motion of the head of an elk when grazing. It is the very poetry of motion spiritualised. When the band is feeding, the leader will, every few minutes, stop grazing, elevate his head, and scan the valley for signs of danger. They feed until about 8 o'clock in the morning, and then retire to their sleeping-place, or sunning-ground. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon they again seek the meadow, where they graze until dusk, when they retire for the night," The favourite food of the elk is the bark and the branches of the aspen, the birch, and the willow.
The woodland caribou, tt large and powerful animal, pos- sessed of great powers of endurance, has a widely extending
habitat, being found in Labrador, over the greater part of Canada, in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the State of Maine. It is a wonderful beast in its way, although not so interesting as its smaller and lighter congener, the European reindeer. According to Dr. Cantrell, the woodland caribou, the wapiti of the dying Indian's blissful dreams, can easily trot twenty-five miles an hour, and keep up that rate of speed for four or five hours. "Time great lumbering moose is a magnificent trotter, but the caribou could get beyond his range of vision in half-an-hour." The eminent American naturalist, Judge Caton, believes both the woodland and the barren-ground caribou to be tree reindeer ; but he hes not yet convinced all naturalists, although study of the reindeer of the Old World in Lapland, amid their native ice and snow, supports his opinion. To the barren-ground caribou (or rein- deer) the Arctic voyagers are much indebted. Its flesh has kept many of. them from starvation, and its skins have
furnished the only clothing that could protect them from Arctic cold.
The " grizzly " is a grand creature, and, although his range is now much restricted, he is still to be " had " in the Wild West. Mr. Rainsford tells us too little about the great savage beast, and too much about his own and other people's feats ix killing him, and how to perform like prodigies of slaughter. "You do not realise his strength until you see his magnificent muscular development when stripped of his skin. Remove his skin, and he is startlingly like a dead man. A huge bull- elk [killed by Mr. Itainsford's party] was carried away, horns and all, by one monstrous grizzly—carried over ground so
rough, and through timber so dense, that we lost all track of the carcass and the thief. The elk weighed well on to a thousand pounds." For food the grizzly prefers elk, but he does very well on nuts, acorns, and "such-like." "The fattest grizzlies I ever killed," says the writer, "were those that had been feeding for weeks on the pine-nuts that the industrious squirrels stow away in such great plenty in their little colonies on the upper hill-sides."
Serjeant Long, of the Greely Arctic Expedition, has some interesting things to tell of the Polar bear. Of all the "speci- mens "in the Zoological Gardens, the wretched, restless captive from the Arctic world has always seemed to us the most pitiable, and we shall pity him all the more from this time forth. Mr. Biederbick on the musk-ox (a creature with amild and beautiful face, most gracefully enclosed between rolling borne) is too much of the hunter, and. too little of the naturalist. The musk-ox is so little known, that we should like to learn more about its habitat, in Grinnell Land and Northern Greenland, its customs, and its ways. It is hunted by the Eskimo with dogs, for its meat, and the great, soft "robes " it yields for bedding or for barter. The peculiar musk flavour by which its flesh is tainted is obviated by " dressing " the carcass so soon as it is killed.
Nn animal on the North American Continent enjoys a greater amount of safety from man than the "big-horn," or Rocky Mountain sheep, the wildest, wariest, and most difficult to hunt of all the game quadrupeds. Its dwelling- place is the highest, raggedest, most forbidding mountain- range ; it is only by the most arduous toil and by dangerous climbing that the bunter can reach its feeding-grounds at all, and then the extraordinary keenness of the animal's sight and scent render it extremely difficult for him to get within rifle- range of it. Unlike the wild goat, the wild sheep is gregarious ; its flesh is considered" the most delicious venison in the moun- tains ;" its face has the mild beauty of the deer-family, but no resemblance to the domestic sheep—indeed, the animal is very like the elk—and it is a courageous, sagaeious creature. The big-horn is found at an altitude of 12,000 ft. in summer, and comes down in early spring into the valleys in search of alkali or the first green vegetation. Mr. Shields defines its range as from Old Mexico to Alaska, and from the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific coast.
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