246 BEAVERS 



plain narrative is more stimulating reading than most 

 works of fiction, and enlists all our sympathy with his 

 efforts to obtain protection for a fascinating but rapidly 

 dwindling race of creatures. 



' In former times, when the Indians had the almost exclusive 

 trapping, they were systematic in their work, and the 

 number taken from each colony was seldom in excess of 

 what would keep the numbers fairly stationary. When the 

 white man entered the competition his one idea was to secure 

 the largest possible crop of skins, utterly regardless whether 

 or not he killed the goose that laid the golden egg. ... At 

 one time it was quite a question whether the beaver was 

 not on the very verge of extermination. The passing of pro- 

 tective laws and the making of parks or reserves have, we 

 hope, rendered this fear groundless, and the beaver that has 

 done so much in the past to help in the development of 

 Canada, will find sanctuary in the land of its forefathers. 



Amen, with all our heart ! I was glad, when last I 

 was in the Natural History Museum at Dresden, to be 

 assured by its accomplished Director that the European 

 beaver still lingers in the Elbe, where it is strictly 

 preserved. It survives also in the Rhone, the Rhine, 

 the lower Danube, and in two or three places in Norway, 

 receiving protection by law in most, if not all, of these 

 regions. Probably, though of this we have no record, 

 it is not yet extinct in Russia, but its food — the inner 

 bark of trees — and its habit of inundating wide tracts of 

 low ground, are not of a nature to earn the goodwill 

 of foresters and farmers. 



