WILD ANIMALS. 99

A fastened to a pole. By experience they know, from the sound produced, where the beaver vaults are, and cut, opposite, a hole large enough to admit an old beaver. While the men are thus employed, the women, and those less experienced, are employed in breaking open the houses ; and the beavers, finding their residence violated, and not being able to remain long under water, are constrained to retreat and remain in their vaults, where they are secured and taken by the Indians.

The moose, or moose deer, is a large animal, gene- rally six feet high, and often exceeding the size of a tall English horse. It has enormous horns, very short neck, long head and ears, a short tail, and awk- ward appearance. Its head and hoofs resemble a camel’s ; its upper lip is much larger than the under, and esteemed a delicacy. The nostrils are very wide; they have no teeth in their upper jaw, and their legs are so long and their neck so short, that they cannot graze on the level ground like other animals, but browse on the tops of plants, and the leaves and twigs of trees and shrubs. The males are much larger than the females ; the hair of the former is long and soft, nearly black at the points, grey a little under the surface, and white at the roots. The female has no horns; its hair is of a sandy brown, and under the belly and throat nearly white. It goes eight months with young, and brings forth from one i to three at a time. The horns of the male are very different from those of the common deer, palmated at the point, from which a feW short branches shoot