CHAPTER TX. 
SomEe OTHER ATTEMPTS AT BEAVER DOMESTICATION. 
OTWITHSTANDING the outcome of my first 
attempt at beaver domestication, I did not con- 
sider the experiment a failure—rather the reverse taking 
the disadvantages I had labored under into considera- 
tion. The beaver had been kept in solitary confinement 
in a careless manner for a period of eight months and 
at the time of his escape was in fine physical condition 
and in high spirits as his humorous antics proved. He 
had been old enough at the time of his capture to well 
know his wants, and my long study of these animals’ 
habits had given me a fair idea as to the selection of his 
feed. Only once or twice previous to this beaver-in-the 
celler episode, had I made any experiments in this line, 
but nothing came of them, and ended as in this instance 
in the beaver evading the experimental tests by dodging 
his keeper. 
The first move at beaver raising in North Dakota had 
its starting in the fall of 1874, when a kitten beaver was 
taken outof Mandan Lake by the writer and given to a 
little Indian girl who then lived with her guardians at 
Pretty Point near the present village of Sanger, Oliver 
county. Asa family of wild beavers had a house near 
by, an opportunity presented irself to-escape from its 
kind little mistress, and take itself to the home of its 
own kind, where it remained—for all its mistress knew. 
