534 University of California Publications in Zoology | Vou. 17 
aplodontia makes itself a nuisance to foresters by undermining trails 
and causing washouts. 
Mountain beaver are easily captured and the usual method of trap- 
ping them is to set No. 0 or No. 1 steel traps in the tunnel entrances. 
The Indians (in Oregon and Washington), says Cooper (1860, p. 82), 
catch the animals with ‘‘stone fall traps.’’ He adds that the skins 
were not then being bought by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Gibbs 
(in Suckley, 1860, pp. 100-106) relates how the Indians, probably the 
Nisqually tribe in Washington, ‘‘trap and eat them and make gar- 
ments by sewing the dried skins together.’’ The animals were there 
resembling the figure four trap. 
ce Le) 
caught in traps Skins of the 
California species bring only from eight to ten cents in the market, so 
there is little danger that the mountain beaver will be exterminated 
as a result of the fur trade. 
Aplodontia is not hardy and if injured in the least does not live 
long in captivity. 
Transmitted February 4, 1918. 
