22 TUE HUNTER AND TEAPPEE. 



interruptedly against the species. In the year 1820, sixty 

 thousand beaver skins were sold by the Pludson Bay Com- 

 pany, which we can by no means suppose to be the whole 

 number killed during the preceding season. If to these 

 be added the quantities collected by the traders from the 

 Indians of the Missouri country, we may form some idea 

 of the immense number of these animals which exist 

 throughout the vast regions of the IsTorth and West. It 

 is a subject of regret that an animal so valuable and pro- 

 lific should be hunted in a manner tending so evidently to 

 the extermination of the species, when a little care 

 and management on the part of those interested might 

 prevent unnecessary destruction, and increase the source 

 of their revenue. The old beavers are frequently killed 

 within a short time of their littering season, and with ev- 

 ery such death from three to six are destroyed ; the young- 

 are often killed before they have attained half their growth 

 and value, and of necessity, long before they have con- 

 tributed to the continuance of their species. In a few 

 years, comparatively speaking, the beaver has been ex- 

 terminated in all the Atlantic and in the Western States, 

 as far as the middle and upper v/aters of the Missouri ; 

 Avhile in the Hudson Bay Possessions they are becoming 

 annually more scarce, and the race v»all eventually be ex- 

 tinguished throughout the whole continent. A few indi- 

 viduals may, for a time, elude the immediate violence of 

 persecution, and like the degraded descendants of the 

 aborigines of our soil be occasionally exhibited as melan- 



