Northern Europe. It is from six to seven feet in length, and has a mane. Their horns are flat, broad, and in some instances four feet from tip to tip. They have occasionally been domesticated in this State, for they are easily tamed.
The moose is decidedly a northern animal; they range on this continent from the Arctic Sea to 43° 30′ in the State of New York.
We have in the United States six varieties of the Deer family; of these, three are found in New York: the Moose, the American Deer, and the American Stag.
The Deer is the smallest and the most common of the three. On Long Island, thanks to the game laws, they are thought to be increasing, and in other southern counties they are still numerous, particularly about the Catskills and the Highlands. They are about five or six feet in length; of a bluish gray in autumn and winter, and reddish in the spring. They belong rather to a warm or temperate climate, extending from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.
The Stag is larger than the Deer—nearly seven feet in length, and about four feet eight inches in height to the fore-shoulders. Its color is reddish in spring, then yellowish brown, and in winter gray. The Stag is now very rare in this State, though still found in the northern and southwestern counties. It is frequently called the Red Deer, and the Round-horned Elk; in fact, it would seem often to have been called more particularly the Elk, under which name it was described by Jefferson. There is a little stream in this county called the Elk Creek, and it was probably named from this animal. It differs from the Stag of Europe. Its horns are round, never palmated.
