176 EXTINCT >AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



Mount Monadnock region; at all events, the late Abbott 

 Thayer obtained one or two specimens there 20 or more years 

 ago. Formerly there were fishers in western Massachusetts, as 

 attested by Emmons (1840) a century ago, but it is safe to say 

 that they are no longer to be found in that State. Nevertheless 

 they are still taken in some numbers in the Adirondack region 

 of New York, and according to the 1939 report of the Biological 

 Survey that State leads in the total number of fishers taken in 

 1938, no less than 117, exceeding even Alaska! Dr. Francis 

 Harper (1929) quotes from the reports of the New York State 

 Conservation Department the numbers of fishers caught, pre- 

 sumably all in the Adirondack counties, for the years 1920-25, 

 as follows: for 1920, 132; for 1921, 186; for 1922, 563; for 1923, 

 112; for 1924, 144; for 1925, 61. The total for 1922 of 563 

 animals seems very remarkable. Apparently in spite of these 

 large catches the animals are still holding their own. This 

 area must be one of the most favorable for them in the country. 

 In Pennsylvania the fisher was formerly found in some num- 

 bers, especially in the beech forests of the more mountainous 

 portions, but it had much declined by the middle of the last 

 century. Rhoads (1903) has assembled many notes on its 

 former occurrence, most of which attest its presence in the 

 fifties and seventies, with a few instances of its more recent 

 capture, as in Lancaster County in 1896; but most of the re- 

 ports speak of it as gone by the beginning of the present cen- 

 tury. In summary he says: "At the present time [1903] about 

 the only counties where these animals are to be found are 

 Clearfield, Cameron, Elk and probably Clinton, Potter, and 

 Sullivan, and in all of these they are reported to be very rare." 

 Reports of fur dealers, Rhoads further states, indicate that 

 probably not over half a dozen fishers were annually killed in 

 Pennsylvania at that time. In a more recent survey of the 

 mammals of Pennsylvania by Williams (1930) the animal is 

 not mentioned at all. Southward of Pennsylvania the fisher in 

 former times extended along the Alleghenies of West Virginia 

 to North Carolina and Tennessee, but seems to have long ago 

 been extirpated from these regions. Dr. Remington Kellogg 

 (1937, 1939) states that the authentic records for West Vir- 

 ginia are few; according to Surber (1909) it formerly occurred 

 in the black-spruce region, but F. E. Brooks (1911) gives no 

 specific records later than 1873. In 1888 Dr. C. Hart Merriam, 



