ANTICOSTA AND ITS FUR. . 137 



son of Mr. de Puyjalon's sedentary habits should 

 have trapped only two. 



I lived within hearing distance (that is, cou- 

 rier's reports) of Mr. de Puyjalon, while that 

 gentleman resided on the coast, and apart from 

 hearing that he set a fox trap or two about his 

 shanty, never heard him mentioned as what we 

 would call a trapper. 



In his article he gives the pekan the credit 

 of showing considerable cunning and finesses. 

 As a matter of natural history they have no 

 more of this than a marten, and will bungle into 

 an ordinarily made dead-fall in the same way. 

 The only thing to do when fisher are known to 

 be about a line of marten traps is to make a 

 larger sized house for him and extra heavy 

 weight to keep him down when caught. 



That the fisher decreases in number is quite 

 contrary to facts. According to the last London 

 sales of mixed furs in September, fisher stood 

 at 4,926, in 1893 4,828, and in 1883 4,640, show- 

 ing that they have increased slightly. In some 

 parts of the country they stand in the returns 

 about equal to the marten exported. I remem- 

 ber this very plainly, for at the time it struck 

 me as peculiar. I was in charge of an out-post 

 on Lake Superior. Our returns were princi- 

 pally beaver, foxes and lynx, very few marten, 

 and in that year I had at the close of trade 96 



