File:Brehm's Life of animals - a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools. Mammalia (1896) (20405205742).jpg

Title: Brehm's Life of animals : a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools. Mammalia
Identifier: brehmslifeofanim1896breh (find matches)
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 1829-1884; Pechuel-Loesche, Edward, 1840-1913; Haacke, Wilhelm, 1855-1912; Schmidtlein, Richard
Subjects: Mammals; Animal behavior
Publisher: Chicago : Marquis
Contributing Library: Internet Archive
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive

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THE DEER—ELKS. 519 straight. The color is a rather uniform reddish brown, deepening into a brilliant black-brown on the crest of the neck and sides of the head, and fading into gray at the extremity of the snout; the legs are whitish ashy-gray, the rings around the eyes gray. The doe is of slightly smaller proportions, but has no antlers. The Domicile, Hab- The Elk delights in wild, lonely its and Diet of forests, abounding in grassy swamps the Elk. anj inaccessible marshes, especially those grown with willows, birches, aspens and other thickly leaved woods. Bogs and marshes seem to be essential to its well-being and comfort. The awkward, stupid-looking creature confines itself to the lower, watery situa- tions in summer, and in winter to the higher ones, which are not exposed to inundations and are not covered with ice. In se- rene weather it prefers forests of ordinary leaved trees; in rain, snow and fog, thick growths of trees with needle-like foliage, such as pines and firs. It readily changes its place of abode if disturbed or urged by want of food. In its habits the Elk differs from the ordinary Deer in many respects. Like the latter it gathers into troops of variable numbers and it is only towards the time that the young are born that the old males separate from these herds and consort in societies of their own. The Elk dislikes being disturbed in any way, even more than do other Deer. It requires abso- lute freedom from moles- tation and forsakes the locality in which it has been annoyed. Wherever it knows that it is secure, it rests only in the morn- ing and afternoon hours, except, perhaps, a few short intervals, and roams about in quest of its food from four o'clock in the afternoon, and during the early night and early morning; under different cir- cumstances it sometimes chooses the night for its search for food. The Elk's principal diet in the forest uplands consists of leaves and shoots of the swamp-willow, birch, ash, aspen, mountain ash, ma- ple, linden, oak and pine; on the heath of young reeds and sedge, supplemented with sprouting corn and flax. When taking its food from the tree it drives its incisor teeth in like a chisel, peels a piece of bark a little distance, seizes the loosened end with its teeth and lips and then tears long strips off in an upward direction. Trees of medium growth it bends down with its head and breaks off their tops; as is easily explained, it prefers trees and shrubs, the bark of which contains a large amount of sap, such as the aspen, ash, willow and poplar, some- times completely stripping very stout aspen trees. Peculiar Modes of The movements of the Elk are much Locomotion of less uniform and lighter than those the Elk. 0f t^ Stags or Red Deer. It is not possessed of great powers of endurance, but is capa- ble of trotting along rather rapidly for a long time; some authorities aver that it can at this gait travel thirty miles a day. Wangenheim describes a very queer mode of loco- motion of the Elks over swampy districts. Where the soil will not bear a running Elk, the animal crouches down on its body, flexing the strong ten- dons of its hind legs; then it stretches out its fore-
Text Appearing After Image:
THE MOOSE. The Moose of North America and the Elk of Europe and Asia are so nearly related that they can scarce!) be regarded as more than varieties of the same species. The Moose shows slight variations in horns and fur from the Elk. and is restricted in its habitat to British America, and is most plentiful in the northern forests of that region. (Alces americana or malchis.) legs, hooks its hoofs on some point of resistance, such as a grass tuft or partly submerged log or branch, pushes with its hind legs and pulls with its fore feet, and thus glides over the muddy surface; where the ground is quite quaky, it sometimes lies down on its side and works its way along by kicking and beating the mud with its legs. In the art of swimming the Elk is an adept. It enters the water not only from necessity, but, like many of the bovine species, for its own comfort and pleasure, to bathe and cool itself. In eastern Siberia it seeks the deeper gorges in the mountains, in which the snow lies for a long time, and there wallows in the cooling ele- ment. It can not long proceed on smooth ice, un- covered by snow, and if it once falls on the slippery

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