50 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Beavers are stoutly built, the northeastern form weighing up 

 to 60 pounds. The short, rounded ears and broadly webbed 

 hind feet are adaptations to aquatic life; the coarse, brown 

 overfur sheds water and protects the short, dense, and plush- 

 like underfur. The broad, flattened tail is practically bare and 

 covered with scales. Swimming is done with the powerful hind 

 feet, while the small fore feet are held against the breast or 

 used in transporting material. The skull is stoutly built, 

 rather triangular in dorsal aspect, with broad nasals that end 

 slightly behind the level of the upward branch of the premaxil- 

 lary. In general color the eastern beaver in fresh pelage is 

 dark chestnut-brown above, the base of the tail and thighs 

 clearer tawny; below, the throat is buff, the rest of the under 

 side drab. In this, the typical race, the tail is over twice as 

 long as broad, a character distinguishing it from the Carolina 

 beaver, which has a relatively broader tail. Total length, about 

 1,100 mm. (about 35 inches); tail, 410; hind foot, 175. 



The range of this race formerly extended from about New 

 Jersey northward to southern Labrador and Hudson Bay 

 (Churchill region) and westward across Canada and Alaska, 

 as far northward as the limit of trees, in well- watered country. 

 Over all this area its numbers are now greatly reduced, or in 

 places it is quite gone. Of the progress of this destruction only 

 the merest outline can be given here. At the time when the 

 first white settlers arrived in Massachusetts Bay and the Hud- 

 son River region, beavers were plentiful along the streams, even 

 near the coast. The earlier accounts contain many references 

 to them and their works. Thus, Governor John Winthrop, in 

 his "History of New England," tells how on January 27, 1631, 

 he set out with a small company from Boston and "went up by 

 Charles River about eight miles above Watertown, and named 

 the first brook, on the north side of the river, (being a fair 

 stream, and coming from a pond a mile from the river,) Beaver 

 Brook, because the beavers had shorn down divers great 

 trees there, and made divers dams across the brook." The 

 name still persists, though the beavers have long since gone. 

 Remains of beavers are common in the Indian kitchen middens 

 all along our eastern coast, as in Connecticut, on Block Island, 

 and the coast of Maine. In the earlier years of the Colonies 

 beaver skins were one of the most important trade products 

 of the country. These were obtained largely from the Indians 



