204 CANADIAN WILDS. 



and cunning old animal and I passed many a 

 long, solitary evening in my canoe to get a shot 

 when the knowing old card broke water. 



I kept two or three traps well set, with a 

 very remote possibility of his putting his only 

 remaining foot therein. Beaver medicine and 

 castorum would not allure him, and the thought 

 occurred to me to try anise seed oil, which I did, 

 and on my next visit had the satisfaction of 

 pulling him up drowned at the end of the chain. 

 The wounds of the cut off legs were so thor- 

 oughly healed that when I skinned him there 

 was not even a pucker of the skin in the places 

 where the legs should have been. It is a marvel 

 how he managed to navigate the waters of his 

 native pond, but as the boy said, "I don't know 

 how he did it, but he did." 



Another freak that I caught in those same 

 lakes was the only albino beaver that I ever saw. 

 She had a creamy white fur, with pink eyes, 

 pink toe nails and pink scales on her tail. This 

 may not have been phenomenal, but it was a 

 rare skin for all that. At a conservative esti- 

 mate I must have handled a couple hundred 

 thousand beaver skins in my life, but this is the 

 only instance that I ever saw a white one. 



The Clear Water Lake, not to be behind in 

 oddities, produced a dwarf beaver. I caught 

 him late in the fall in a trap set for musquash, 



