154 Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletin 



were plentiful was in itself evidence that trout were thriving and 

 propagating there. Other waters he named were Crooked Lake 

 and Stony Lake. On a stream connected with the former he said 

 there were 15 beaver dams, but that last spring there was as good 

 if not better fishing in this stream than ever before. Mr. Davis 

 declared that he had been coming into the Adirondacks for years 

 to fish and was thoroughly familiar with the conditions. Each 

 succeeding year he had been obliged to seek more and more remote 

 places in order to find good fishing. The cause of this, he firmly 

 believed, was not chargeable to the beaver but to a class of people 

 who make a practice of taking under-sized fish. The extension 

 of roads throughout the Adirondacks had made a steadily increas- 

 ing area easily accessible to numbers of unscrupulous persons who 

 have little regard either for the spirit or the letter of the law. The 

 gradual depletion of trout in the ponds and streams is the result. 

 Meanwhile the true sportsman becomes discouraged and provoked, 

 and occasionally perhaps may be unaware of the true situation and 

 places the blame in the wrong place. 



Mr. Casler, although having no patience with the beaver, which 

 he believed ought to be exterminated, agreed with Mr. Davis that 

 there is a prevalent pratice with some classes of people of taking 

 quantities of under-sized trout. 



Another champion of the beaver was found in Mr. H. H. Fish of 

 Indian Lake. Mr. Fish informed me that he had been a guide 

 for many years and had been a consistent defender of the beaver 

 in its relation to trout. He mentioned as examples where fishing 

 was never better than it was after beaver came, Buell Brook and 

 Cedar River Flow. Beaver dams, according to Mr. Fish, permit 

 the formation where springs come in, of deep, cool pools, highly 

 favorable to trout. More food is found in the beaver ponds and 

 the trout as a consequence grow larger. Mr. Fish admitted, how- 

 ever, that under certain conditions or in certain localities beaver 

 dams might have harmful effects, such as preventing movements 

 of the trout upstream in spawning time, hindering circulation of the 

 water or allowing of its being warmed to an unfavorable degree 

 in mid-summer. 



For further testimony favorable to the beaver I am indebted 

 to Dr. Howard Lilienthal of New York City. In a letter of Sep- 

 tember 30 last he informs me of a conversation he had with "one 

 of the best slides in the Bier Moose Lake re°;ion" who stated "that 



