BEAVER AND CANADIAN HISTORY 195 
promptly inaugurated and intelligently pursued by 
the now united Fur Trading and Governing 
Corporation. For more than a decade subsequent 
to 1821 each beaver district in the chartered and 
licensed territories of the Hudson’s Bay Company 
was annually restricted to the collection of a certain 
fixed number of beaver, which course eventually 
proved of much benefit to all concerned. By this 
means the perpetuation of the beaver was insured 
in sections where reckless slaughter had almost 
exterminated it, while the resulting expansion in 
more forward localities naturally followed. With 
the view, however, of reconciling them to this 
enforced mode of preservation, the natives were 
strongly urged and encouraged to devote their best 
energies to the trapping of martens and other fur- 
bearing animals. After the beaver were known to 
have largely increased in numbers, and still sold 
well, the above rule was gradually relaxed; and as 
the wants of the Indians in those days were com- 
paratively few, they never experienced any particular 
hardship from the limit thus imposed upon them 
in the general interest. It may be here mentioned 
that the Company never encouraged the hunting of 
beaver or any other pelt out of season. On the 
contrary they strictly prohibited the killing of 
beaver in summer, and would only reluctantly 
accept the skins of such animals as they were 
assured had been absolutely necessary for food 
purposes. 
02 
