56 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Vermont, central New Hampshire, and Mount Desert, Maine, 

 and at the present time they seem well established in several 

 localities. 



From west of the Alleghenies to the edge of the Plains, 

 beavers seem at the present time to be quite gone over most of 

 their former range. For Ohio, Bray ton (1882) mentions their 

 former abundance but implies that they had practically gone 

 by the middle of the last century. In Indiana, Hahn (1909) 

 gives 1840 as about the last authentic record, and both he and 

 Lyon (1936) believe that the beaver of this State may have 

 represented the southeastern race, while the latter adduces 

 what seems a reliable recent record of the animal from Wells 

 County in the northeastern part of the State and implies that 

 it may have come in from adjacent parts of Michigan, where a 

 few beavers still exist. Possibly, however, it was introduced, 

 for in 1935 small "plants" of beavers were made in three 

 counties, Jasper, Pulaski, and Starke, on game preserves, and 

 these have so multiplied that in 1939 they had spread into ten 

 other counties of northern Indiana, and additional "plants" 

 have been made in Jennings and Clark Counties in the southern 

 portion, where, however, the conditions of sufficient food and 

 water are less favorable for them. Strict protective laws are in 

 force, but in general land owners are interested in the encour- 

 agement of the beaver, in part from the benefit to water con- 

 trol and in part on account of the interesting habits of the 

 animals (from Outdoor Indiana, Nov. 1939). 



Still farther west, Cory (1912) writes: "Beavers were for- 

 merly common throughout Illinois and Wisconsin but at the 

 present time they are practically exterminated in the former 

 State," although "it is probable that a very few individuals 

 may exist in the extreme southern portion," in Alexander 

 County, whence fresh cuttings were obtained in 1900. In 1854, 

 Kennicott wrote of beaver dams still existing at various points 

 in Illinois, as if the animals had practically gone even by that 

 day. In northern Wisconsin, however, they are now common. 



North of the United States, beavers still occur plentifully 

 in the more remote parts of western Canada but have been 

 largely reduced in the more accessible regions and, of course, 

 extirpated in the settled areas. G. G. Goodwin (1924), writing 

 of the mammals of the Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec, tells of finding 

 a skull at the forks of the Ste. Anne River and adds that 



