354 BULLETIN 56, UNITP:D STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



hair has been phicked out; but the price at which they were sold 

 shows that beaver trapping was not a remunerative occupation in 

 Arizona, which is further attested by the great al)undancc of these 

 animals along the rivers of the Territory during the early eighties. I 

 have had large skins offered me, prepared with less skill and pains than 

 those above described for 50 cents apiece; but the value lias risen so 

 that a trapper named JSIilligan, who obtained more than 100 skins on 

 the Gila and Verde rivers during the winter of 1886-87, selling them 

 by the pound, received an average price of $5 apiece. The largest 

 beaver taken by Mr. ■\Iilligan weighed 73 pounds. 



IJahits and local distribution. — Signs of the beaver were evident on 

 nearly all of the streams of the Colorado Basin visited by me from 

 March, 1884, to Ma}^, 1888. I always found this animal to be exces- 

 sively shy, secretive, and difficult of observation, in these respects 

 quite different from the half-tame beavers of the Yellowstone National 

 Park. The slight amount of information respecting them that I was 

 able to obtain while in Arizona can be best presented in the form of 

 extracts from my diar}^ of those years, as follows: 



July 18, 1884, Fort Verde, Aiizona. — Beavers are abundant in pools 

 of Beaver Creek from above Montezuma Well to the Verde River. 

 Mr. Henry Mehrens, a settler living just below Montezuma Well, says 

 he frequently sees them in pools of Beaver Creek, which are there 

 densel}^ bordered by tule {Scirpus) and surrounded hj willow and 

 Cottonwood trees, upon which they feed. He informed me that 

 beaver frequent the irrigation ditches of the ranches along the stream, 

 doing some damage to the ditches and shade trees planted along them. 



August 16, 1884, ^'ort Verde, Arizona. — I killed an old male beaver 

 about 3 miles above the post of Fort Verde, in the Verde River. I 

 first saw it in the river a good way above me, floating like a piece of 

 driftwood, low in the \\ ater. For some time I was unalde to make out 

 Avhether it was an animal or not; but I soon saw it move its head up 

 and down slightly, and then I felt sure that it was a beaver — the first 

 one I ever saw. Every walk I had taken along the banks of the Verde 

 River had revealed to me evidences of the abundance and industry of 

 this singular beast. Large cottonwood trees were to be seen with 

 trunks gnawed half through, which, on the next occasion that I vis- 

 ited the spot, were lying prostrate, felled by the beaver. Numbers of 

 cottonwood trees had been cut down by them during the preceding 

 two months, and in some places every tree near the water and some 

 good-sized ones at quite a distance from the stream had been cut, until 

 the spot resembled a clearing made hy the woodman's ax. The sap- 

 lings and limbs were frequently dragged to form a large windrow 

 beside the river bank, in doing whicli well-made paths had been swept 

 in the sand and loam l)y the industrious l)eavers. I had not seen any 

 typical or recently occupied beaver dams, although there were re- 



