74 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



Type locality. — Dan River, near Danbury, Stokes Co., N. Carolina. 



Faunal distribution. — Austral and transition zones ; Massachusetts to 

 Florida, west to the Coast Range. 



Distribution in Pa. and N.J. — This subspecies was formerly a native of 

 all the extensive regions included in the upper austral and transition zones of 

 the two states, supposedly intergrading into canadensis in the regions named 

 above under that species. 



Records in Pa. — Owing to the earlier settling up of the country inhabited 

 by this race of beaver in Pa., I am not able to give any dates of its disap- 

 pearance in that state. As one of the chief items of barter with the aborigines 

 was beaver skins, this animal speedily was exterminated in the more accessible 

 regions, leaving behind it only the name of creek, or river, lake, or meadow, 

 or township, yea, even a county to perpetuate its memory. Probably Penn's- 

 colony had not been settled twenty years on the Delaware before most of the 

 beavers of the lower Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna valleys had been 

 shipped as pelts to England. This was the condition about the year 1700. 

 By the time of the American Revolution, 76 years more of colonization had 

 practically wiped out the lowland beaver from all the great river valleys of the 

 ■state except the northern tributaries of the Ohio. On this account, practic- 

 ally all contemporary history of that period was too much engrossed in the 

 ■"winning of the west " to record observations on natural history, and we have 

 hardly so much as a tradition of when and where the last valley beaver trod 

 incautiously upon a steel trap. 



Records in N.J. — Owing to the inaccessible and unproductive character of 

 the lands of southern New Jersey, the beaver continued to exist in some of 

 the most retired swamps of Atlantic and Cape May counties long after its 

 brethren of the Pa. lowlands were exterminated. On this account, a few 

 records have been found indicating its approximate disappearance. All 

 "beaver records given below dating later than 1820, we may safely include 

 ■under the class of species introduced by man into our limits. — Rhoads. 



Atlantic Co. — " I never saw one dead or alive " [very significant of their 

 ■absence since 1830, as he was a most noted hunter in Atlantic Co. for nearly 

 50 years]. About 1818, a friend of his saw them swim across Great Egg 

 Harbor River. Six old dams known to him in Atlantic Co. — 2 at Hammon- 

 ton, I three miles south of Egg Harbor City, i between May's Landing and 

 Weymouth and i south of Doughty's Tavern. — Coffin. " In the northern part 

 of the county, between Atsion and Batsto, the water from the main branch of 

 the Machesautuxen was carried to the eastward through the high grounds by 

 means of ditches or canals, into a smaller stream called Sleepy Creek, where 

 dams were erected and where the beavers had their dwellings. . . . Higher 

 up the same stream a series of dams were erected, flooding the whole valley 

 for several miles and so destroying the timber that but little has grown upon 



