14-2 Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletin 



cient depth to carry the logs. Sluices may he continually choked 

 up by the beaver, necessitating constant vigilance on the part of 

 someone to keep them open. Where many beaver ponds exist, 

 exposing a large surface area, the evaporation and retarded flow 

 may be sufficiently great in dry periods to reduce materially the 

 amount of water necessary to run logs. According to Mr. H. D. 

 Cornwall of Glenfield this loss may be as high as 10 to 15 per cent. 



In this connection it would seem that the beaver is not altogether 

 an unmixed evil. There are small streams favorably situated m 

 logging areas which normally would serve no useful purpose to a 

 logging concern. As a result of beaver dams such a stream might, 

 at least in a part of its course, be converted into an avenue of 

 transportation, not necessarily for logs, though that also might be 

 possible, but for supplies, and thus be not without a degree of 

 usefulness. I met with an instance in the Adirondacks where a 

 beaver flow offered easy transportation of supplies to a fishing club 

 for a distance of probably half a mile or more where without this 

 means considerable time and labor and perhaps expense would 

 undoubtedly have been entailed. In other regions than the Adiron- 

 dacks, I have many times been personally grateful for the presence 

 of beaver flows that afforded me easy passage by canoe or boat to 

 localities otherwise inaccessible. 



Salvaging of Drowned Timber. Any person tramping about in 

 the Adirondacks cannot. I am sure, avoid a feeling of regret that 

 all the dead wood in the beaver flows, and elsewhere for that mat- 

 ter, cannot be taken off and made use of in some way. It is true 

 that most of it is soft wood and not of a desirable kind even for 

 fuel, but there is much sound wood of harder varieties that might 

 be utilized not merely for fuel but possibly for lumber for certain 

 purposes, if taken in time. While accessibility and transportation 

 difficulties are no doubt deterrent factors it would seem that the 

 inhabitants of the region in many places should be able to clear 

 off a part of this dead wood. From what I learned in conversation 

 with a number of thrifty residents I believe that many of them 

 would be glad to avail themselves of the opportunity if it were per- 

 missible for this to be granted by the State. /;; many of the locali- 

 ties that I visited about all the timber that can be reached by beaver 

 ■Hows lias already been killed. While the dams in these places will 

 continue in repair so long as the animals remain, there is little likeli- 

 hood that thev will continue to stow greatlv in height and indefinitelv 



