o5 



about three miles west of the present town of Crown Point. The portions found 

 were the teetli, weighing some four pounds earli. I am sorry not to have in my 

 possession any of its hemes, lint the remains of a liuge (juadrufied wt-re found there 

 without a douht. 



2. I name next the beaver, Catiliir filter or amcricanu><; remains of the works o| 

 these busy tniU'rs having been found in difierent parts of the county, and some 

 rodent bones, supposed to be of beaver, were exhumed at tlie head of Cedar 

 Lake, along with human remains, October 1, 1880, the human skeletons havinj» 

 been there more than two hundred years. No living beaver have l)een seen in the 

 county for more than sixty years, the si'ttleiiicnt of tlie county liearing date of 

 1834. 



3. There is some evidence found in tlie records of the early French exidor- 

 ers that the buffalo or American bison roamed over the prairies and mar.-hes of 

 northwestern Indiana two hundred years ago, but that animal, in the region 

 named, has certainly been extinct beyond the reach of the knowledge and mem- 

 ory of two generations of hunters and trappers. 



4. Some individuals of the black bear species, Z77\sm.s americanuH, were found 

 in the county some sixty years ago by the very earliest settlers. One was shot by 

 Solon Kobinson where is now the town of Crown Point. The few seen were proti- 

 ably stragglers, their proper domain just touching the broad prairie region he- 

 ginning in the northwestern corner of the State. 



o. Elk horns have been found at Cedar Lake and in the West Creek marsh. 

 one of which is now in my possession, showing that once, perhaps a hundred years 

 ago, this stately animal fed beside these waters. 



6. The earlier inhabitants of the county found a few wild cats, proliably 

 Felis catus, one of which species was killed at the head of Cedar Lake, in an alder 

 thicket or swamp, early in 1838. A large and formidable looking animal he 

 seemed to me to be, as, with the eyes of a young hunter boy eleven years of age, I 

 looked upon him. For years that thicket, M'hicli was on my father's land, was 

 known as Wild Cat Swamp. These cats may be called extinct since 1840. Indi- 

 viduals also of the lynx species or variety, Lyn.r rufus, it is claimed, were seen and 

 heard in early times, fifty years ago. 1 myself saw in the night, going down from 

 a tree to which we had chased it, an animal that, judging from its movements, 

 might have been a lynx, l)ut none were then killed. Miss Belle I)inwiddie, of 

 Plum (irove, is authority, and competent authority, for the statement that an an- 

 imal of the cat kind and called a lynx was killed near her home a few years ago, 

 It is probable that (inly one species of /'e/i's was nativi'. 



