inside of a few hours. The reason for keeping both 

 trap and chain under water, even at the ends of the 

 portages across sandbars, is of course in order that no 

 scent will be felt which the beaver might detect. They 

 have an acute sense of smell, and trappers must exer- 

 cise care o'r the trap will be given a wide birth. Bait 

 was used in most cases, consisting either of fresh pop- 

 ple twigs, so placed as to cause the animal to put his 

 hind feet in the vicinity of the trap if he would feed 

 on the tender shoots ; or, in some cases, castoreum was 

 rubbed on objects above the water and near the trap. 

 From our observations, this was no better than the 

 twigs for bait. It was found to be a good plan to visit 

 the traps as early as possible in the morning, since we 

 did not want to take chances on losing valuable ani- 

 mals; neither did we want to cause the unnecessary 

 suffering. 



The Beaver Himself. It seems to be a common im- 

 pression that beaver are not much larger than wood- 

 chucks, but this is a great mistake. The full-grown in- 

 dividuals caught averaged about fifty pounds each, 

 some of them indeed weighing well over sixty pounds. 

 The beaver is exceedingly compact and heavy for its 

 size. The length of a sixty-pound beaver from nose to 

 tail-tip is slightly less than four feet, its girth thirty 

 inches, length of tail eleven or twelve inches, width of 

 tail five or six inches, and thickness of tail at the mid- 

 dle three-quarters of an inch to an inch. The hind feet 

 are almost as large as a man's hand and webbed like a 

 duck's foot. 



In skinning the beaver, the open method is used 

 rather than casing ; in other words, the skin is taken 



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