NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 177 



after a journey of several hundred miles through "the Great 

 Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, reported 

 that the pekan was unknown" to local residents, but "reliable 

 information exists that this animal formerly occurred in that 

 area" (Kellogg, 1939). Audubon and Bachman (1846) mention 

 skins from eastern Tennessee and the capture of an individual 

 near Flat Rock. 



West of the Alleghenies the fisher seems to have been rare 

 even in early days, south of the Great Lakes. Bray ton (1882) 

 includes it in his list of Ohio mammals but cites no specific 

 records. For Indiana, Dr. Lyon (1936) states that there is 

 considerable evidence of its former presence, "either as a regu- 

 lar resident or as a wanderer from the north," but specific 

 instances are perhaps three, which he gives as (1) the statement 

 of Plummer in 1844 that it was not uncommon at an earlier 

 period, but had not been seen since 1820; (2) the listing of a 

 skin purchased of local trappers near Noblesville in 1859; and 

 (3) the testimony of Wied as to its former occurrence at New 

 Harmony. Evidently it has been gone from this region for 

 well nigh a century. Cory in ^912 believed it by no means 

 improbable "that a few individuals may still exist in some of the 

 extreme northern counties" of Wisconsin, and he was informed 

 "that it is occasionally taken in the wilder portions of the 

 Michigan peninsula." He instanced three from the latter 

 region, taken in Iron County in 1898 and 1900. The latest 

 record for this region that he gives is of one killed in November 

 1900, between Iron Mountain and Pembine, Wis. Kennicott, 

 half a century before, mentioned it as rather frequently seen 

 in the heavy timber along Lake Michigan. Evidently it is now 

 practically .gone from the lake region. As to its present status 

 still farther northwest, along the border of Minnesota and the 

 adjacent Quetico Park, Canada, Cahn (1937) writes: "The re- 

 moval of the large timber has profoundly affected the distribu- 

 tion of the fisher, as it has that of the marten, and it is now to 

 be regarded as extremely rare in the Quetico, although some 

 still are to be found there ... I have in my collection 

 17 skulls of fisher which I collected from about the camps of 

 trappers up the Wawiag River. " In former days the range of 

 the fisher extended to northeastern North Dakota, where 

 judged from the data presented by Bailey (1926) it was fairly 

 common at the beginning of the last century, for Alexander 



