66 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



early fall of 1922, when a farmer in Hampshire County re- 

 ported finding fresh beaver work on a creek tributary to North 

 River. Subsequent investigation disclosed a colony of beavers 

 here. They had "built a dam and done much cutting along 

 both banks of the stream." All efforts to learn of the origin 

 of this colony were unsuccessful. 



Beavers persisted in North Carolina until recent years. 

 The series of specimens from Dan River, near Danbury, Stokes 

 County, on which the race carolinensis was based, was col- 

 lected between 1897 and 1899. C. S. Brimley, writing in 

 1905, says that it occurs sparingly there and is also reported 

 from Bertie County. A specimen taken 15 or 20 years pre- 

 viously at Weldon is in the State Museum at Raleigh. These 

 localities are all on the Roanoke River or its tributaries. He 

 adds that "Mr. J. H. Armfield reports a few occurring in 

 Beaver Swamp in the northern part of Guilford County and 

 southern part of Rockingham, and Mr. K. E. Shore reports 

 them from the Yadkin River, between Yadkin and Forsyth 

 Counties." At the present time, 1939, the beavers seem to 

 have quite disappeared. 



No recent record of the beaver in South Carolina is known 

 to me. In Georgia, however, a few still remain and are care- 

 fully protected, in the Flint River section in the southwestern 

 part of the State and at the headwaters of the Chattahoochee. 

 Dr. Francis Harper (1927) in his account of the mammals of 

 Okefenokee Swamp, Ga., adduces evidence that they were 

 formerly present there. He was shown an incisor tooth taken 

 from a beaver killed about 1890 by an old Negro woman a 

 mile or so east of Lloyd's Island. "The story goes that the 

 woman came upon the animal in the road and clubbed it to 

 death." Dr. Harper suggests that the southward range of the 

 beaver may have been to a large extent limited by the presence 

 of the alligator. He doubts if it ever regularly inhabited the 

 interior of Okefenokee Swamp, else it would probably have 

 survived there or left some tradition of its earlier presence. 

 In former times there were beavers in extreme northern 

 Florida (Bartram mentions them), but little or nothing is 

 known of the time of their disappearance. An unmistakable 

 molar tooth was lately found in an Indian mound on Indian 

 River by J. H. Rowe. 



To the westward of the Alleghenies, the Carolina beaver is 



