CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 



IT will be surprising to many who perhaps will learn for 

 the first time that Louisiana is the leading fur-producing 

 territory of North America, to be told that Louisiana 

 fauna not only once included beaver but that we still have 

 colonies of these very peculiar mammals. Today the Loui- 

 siana beaver is rigidly protected by state laws, and in the 

 one locality of the state where this mammal exists, in spite 

 of man's usurpation of its habitat, the inhabitants observe 

 the ban against trapping religiously. 



LePage du Pratz wrote of the beaver in Louisiana and 

 gave the readers of his quaint volumes an idea as to the 

 looks of the beaver in the engraving that embellished one 

 of the pages. Another early Louisiana writer, Father 

 Charlevoix, in his "History of New France", said: "We 

 had heard that the Beaver was formerly found near New 

 Orleans, but we never saw one in Louisiana". 20 



In this brief life history of the beaver the liberty has 

 been taken of drawing freely on what Vernon Bailey, chief 

 field naturalist of the bureau of biological survey, has pub- 

 lished in his bulletin on this very peculiar rodent, 21 as it is 



="Charlevoix, Nouv. France, vol. iii, P- 133. 



^Bailey, Beaver Habits and Experiments in Beaver Culture, Tech. Bull. 

 No. 21, U. S. Dept. of Agricul. 



