uous trees and water, and in a few treeless places 

 where there were only water and grass, the beaver 

 were found. Along the thousands of smaller 

 streams throughout North America there was 

 colony after colony, dam after dam, in close suc- 

 cession, as many as three hundred beaver ponds 

 to the mile. Lewis and Clark mention the fact 

 that near the Three Forks, Montana, the streams 

 stretched away in a succession of beaver ponds 

 as far as the eye could reach. The statements 

 made by the early explorers, settlers, and trappers, 

 together with my own observations, which com- 

 menced in 1885, and which have extended pretty 

 well over the country from northern Mexico into 

 Alaska, lead to the conclusion that the beaver 

 population of North America at the beginning of 

 the seventeenth century was upwards of one hun- 

 dred million. The area occupied was approxi- 

 mately six million square miles, and probably two 

 hundred beaver population per square mile would 

 be a conservative number for the general average. 

 In the United States there are a number of 

 counties and more than one hundred streams and 

 lakes named for the beaver ; upwards of fifty post- 

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