68 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



tween specimens of the original beaver stock of southern N. J. and those of 

 the Canadian regions of Pa. It has been many years since beavers were sup- 

 posed to have been exterminated in the Pa. wilderness. Whether the records 

 of recent captures and observations of beavers in the State of Pa. are based 

 on survivors of the native race or are strays from captivity we are not always 

 able to discover, but in some cases, such as those mentioned under the next 

 subspecies, they were evidently from imported stock. 



Records in Pa. Cambria C0.--The following record of a Cambria Co. 

 beaver, coming as it does from a person of so much intelligence and fully 

 appreciating the need of accuracy in an identification of this kind, induces 

 me to insert it as probably correct. From the nature of its surroundings and 

 the absence of any evidence that a game preserve was ever located in the 

 neighborhood, it is not impossible that this beaver is one of the last if not 

 the last representative of the old beaver stock to be found in the Middle 

 States, unless there be some remaining in the Adirondacks, a fact not proved 

 in Miller's recent List of New York Mammals : 



" I saw a beaver on a branch of South Fork of Little Conemaugh [Portage 

 twp.] Sept. i6th, 1899. This branch is marked on old maps 'Beaver Dam 

 Branch,' though I do not know where or how long ago dams existed. Prior 

 to flood of 1889, this country was almost untouched. A lumber road now 

 runs through bed of old South Fork dam and up main fork, but much of the 

 timber on this ' Beaver Dam Branch ' is intact. Hemlocks, 3 ft. through are 

 in great numbers. Many years ago there was a small saw-mill at about the 

 point marked with a red dot on sketch map [near Blair Co. line] ; and where 

 the stream re-enters the forest is a big pile of rotting slabs and butts, with 

 slack water above. The beaver was just below this and came splashing down 

 stream toward us, plunging into a pool not ten feet away just as he saw us, 

 apparently ; for he turned under water and ran up stream, disappearing under 

 the pile of slabs. I was uncertain as to its identity until it turned and we had 

 a good look at close range. The valley for four miles below this point is vir- 

 gin forest and only disturbed by trout fishers. In a few years, however, it 

 will be all cut over, as the hemlock is very valuable and the mills but five or 

 six miles down stream." Signed W. C. McHenry, Oct., 1899. 



In answer to my further inquiries regarding this record, Mr. McHenry 

 wrote as follows : 



"JOHNSTOWN, PA., DEC. l8TH, 00. 



" DEAR SIR : Replying to your note of I yth, relative to the Cambria County Beaver, 

 would say that I have been unable to make another trip to the locality for additional evi- 

 dence. The only doubts I had, however, were removed last winter, when, in company with 

 the young man [Frank Phillips] who was with me on the South Fork trip, I visited the col- 

 lection of mammals at the Field Museum in Chicago and carefully inspected specimens of 

 the Beaver as well as animals with which it would be at all possible to confound it. This 

 confirmed us both beyond doubt that the animal we saw in good daylight and so close we 



