North gave birth to its calves in Pennsylvania. Merrill says that usually two or three were produced at a birth, making them the most prolific of the deer family. In the extreme Southern limits the calves were born in April. For years after the last Moose had ceased coming to Pennsylvania, the visits of the Moose Birds set the old hunters on the qui vive; as in the case of the bison in the West and the wild pigeons here, it took them a long while to realize that the Moose would come no more. John H. Chatham, the Clinton County naturalist and poet, saw a Moose bird in McElhattan, that county, in the winter of 1903. It is difficult to ascertain just who the hunters were who slew the Moose in Pennsylvania, few Indians of note were guilty of the slaughter of their beloved Original; only the starving rag-tag of the redmen helped in the final extirpation.

SAMUEL N. RHOADS,
The Great Authority on the Mammals of Pennsylvania.

Doubtless if a list of male residents along the backbone of the Allegheny Chain from Moosic Mountain, Lackawanna County, to Elk Lick, Somerset County, of about the year 1790 could be procured, it would be as good a roster of early Pennsylvania Moose hunters as is obtainable. Who killed the last moose in Pennsylvania is a mooted point. Jacob Flegal, a Clearfield County pioneer, is said to have killed the moose whose antlers adorned Captain Logan's cabin near Chickalacamoose, one of the Buchanans killed a moose south of the Juniata, near McVeytown, Indians killed a moose on Moose Run, Centre County (giving the stream its name); Landlord Heller's neighbors' dogs caused the death of the moose, the antlers of which hung over the main entrance of the old stone tavern in the Wind Gap for so many years. All these moose were killed during the decade between 1780 and 1790; there is no record of any having been seen since then. In other words, they were exterminated in Pennsylvania about the same time as the bison. It has been stated that "Colonel John Kelly killed the last bison in Pennsylvania in 1790 or 1800." As to definite dates, probably the moose killed by the Buchanans on the Juniata comes as near to being known as any. The old tavern which this family kept for many years was opened in about 1790. The moose was killed either that same year or the year following. For many years this tavern was known as "The Bounding Elk," being named for a Black Elk or Moose, which some years before the erection of the building, swam the Juniata nearby, but was killed before he could take harbor in the southerly forests. Dorcas Holt Buchanan, wife of "The Bounding Elk's" first landlord, was herself an intrepid Nimrod. It is recorded that on one occasion when a big deer was chased out of Matawanna Gap into the river by dogs the young woman plunged into the stream, and catching it by the horns, drowned it in a pool. Several of the habitues of the tavern cheered the plucky girl from the bench at the front door, shouting: "Go it, 'Dorkey,'" as she grappled with the terrified "Monarch of the Glen." It is related that the trick could not have been performed more neatly by Shaney John, an Indian hunter, who drowned many deer in this way, or by his white disciple, "Josh" Roush, "The Terrible Hunter" of the Seven Mountains. On another occasion while sewing by an open window one summer evening, Dorcas noticed a wolf looking in at her. Picking up the rifle, which she always kept by her side, she rammed the barrel down the frightened animal's throat. In this connection it may be well to quote Roush further on the Moose in Pennsylvania, as related to him by pupils of Shaney John. The old Indian said that he had as a boy feasted on "Moose nose," a great delicacy, and once had seen a young Moose broken to draw a sledge one particularly severe winter, at a camp near the headwaters of the Moshannon River in Blair County. The beast hauled a load of hides to the Bald Eagle's Nest in Centre County. An Indian hunter named Harthegig was the trainer, while two warriors named The Big Cat and Killbuck, accompanied the consignment to the nest. According to some authorities the European "Elk" or Moose has performed similar service in Sweden.

V. MOOSE HORNS.

Few and far between are the traces of Moose horns in Pennsylvania. But they do exist, and probably in some remote farmhouse garret a set or two are still to be found. The writer, when engaged in antiquarian studies along the Blue Mountains accidentally learned of the last known pair. They hung for many years above the front door of Heller's stone tavern, near the Wind Gap, in Northampton County, once the famous pathway of the Moose from Northern to Southerly regions. It was related that Marks John Biddle, a celebrated lawyer of Reading, while stopping at this tavern, when on a horseback journey, noticed the horns, and asked about them of the landlord. Old Jacob Heller obliged his guest by taking them down and letting him measure them. They had a width of 78-1/2 inches and weighed a trifle over 91 pounds. Dr. Hornaday in his "American Natural History" tells of a Moose killed in the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, in 1903, the antlers and skull of which weighed 93-1/2 pounds. The Record Moose Horns in the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago, weigh about 92 pounds. This Record Moose was taken in the Kenai Peninsula in 1899. The late Captain F. C. Selous (recently killed in battle in British East Africa) stated that the antlers of a Moose which he killed on the McMillan River, Canada, in 1904 had a spread of 66-1/2 inches and weighed 75 pounds.

JOHN Q. DYCE (1830-1904),
A Hunter Who Delighted to Tell of the Times When Moose Were Visitors to the Wilds of the Keystone State.

Doubtless the Moose of Colonial days was a much larger animal than any specimens seen today, even the gigantic so-called "Alaskan" Moose. By studying the deterioration of European Red Deer, by the actual measurements of horns in various Continental collections and actual weights recorded in old-time sportsmen's note books, during the past three hundred years from antlered giants to puny runts, it is doubtless the same with our Moose. Like the Red Deer of Europe, the Moose of America is hunted ruthlessly for exceptional heads, and is no longer troubled by wolves which formerly pulled down the weakly and imperfect specimens; result a sure deterioration. That the predatory animals do not deteriorate in size is proved by the fact that fossil bones of wolves discovered in England are not any larger than those of European wolves of the present day. The Wind Gap moose horns were taken, Heller said, from a Moose which had been driven by dogs at a trot through the Gap, and at the Easterly end it had staggered and fallen to the roadway from exhaustion. A farmer named Adam Gross got an improvised rope and tackle, and swung the huge brute, which he averred weighed at least a ton, into his barn. It lived only a week, despite all manner of attentions devoted to it. The dead Moose was propped up astride of a fodder-shocker and exhibited in Gross's barn as long as the cold weather lasted. Heller remarked that there was another