70 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



were probably taken on Beaver river, a few miles south of Brookville. 

 Rhoads. 



McKean Co. "About 70 years ago there was a nice beaver dam and 

 meadow with a fine lot of beaver on the Kinzua Creek in the southwestern 

 part of this county. This Beaver Meadow, as it was and is yet called, is 

 about two miles above the Kinzua Viaduct. At or near this meadow is where 

 the last beaver was caught in this county. Jerod Robison caught two or 

 three there in 1839. I have heard it stated that beaver have been caught 

 near these old meadows as late as the sixties, but could never hear what the 

 man's name was who captured them." Dickinson, 1901. 



Monroe and Pike Cos. "The older residents concur in the opinion that 

 the beaver was exterminated nearly fifty years ago in northwestern Pa. Their 

 dams and meadows are still pointed out in numerous places along Bushkill 

 and Dingman creeks." See Rhoads, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1894, 

 p. 390. 



The following notice of living beavers in Monroe Co. was published in the 

 Sunday North American, Dec. 15, 1901 : 



"The animal population of Pennsylvania has lately been augmented by the 

 arrival of a score of beavers. Where they came from, and how they reached 

 the Keystone State, no one knows, but that they are here cannot be denied, 

 for their newly-built home has just been discovered on the farm of Judge 

 Edinger, near Stroudsburg, in Monroe county. 



" It is a genuine beaver dam, one of those marvels of ingenious construc- 

 tion now seldom found anywhere save in the most inaccessible parts of Canada 

 and other northern countries. 



" The presence of this dam and its builders in Pennsylvania, scarcely a 

 hundred miles from Philadelphia, is a problem that naturalists will find hard 

 to solve. 



" All the known habits of the beaver increase the mystery. He is one of 

 the most secretive of animals, and has but rarely been seen by human eyes, 

 so carefully does he shun mankind. Moreover, beavers have been so per- 

 sistently hunted in this country that they are likely to become extinct, and 

 are now rare even in the remote parts of Canada. 



" The discovery of the dam came through accident. John Storm, a resi- 

 dent of Snydersville, stumbled on to it while following a rabbit in the hills 

 near his home. But for this chance, it might have remained hidden for years, 

 for its cunning builders had cleverly concealed it with a protecting shield of 

 twigs and branches. 



"Visitors by the hundred, from city and countryside, have flocked to the 

 scene, and marveled at the skill with which the little animal engineers had 

 fashioned their strange abode. 



"To all appearances, the beavers had been there for months, for the dam 



