39 : 



REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 



*"~<-j# 



'S^iui^MASr .1 



explorer of the eighteenth century, is very valuable, and was for over a cen- 

 tury the basis of most of the succeeding descriptions. It is still quoted 

 extensively. The short treatise* on the beaver of Bennett, an Englishman, 

 published in 1835, is also deserving of note. In his book, Lake Champlain 

 and its Shores, W. H. H. ("Adirondack ") Murray quotes in full an article 

 on the beaver of nearly three thousand words by one of the early settlers 

 of Vermont, Dr. Samuel Williams, LL.D., which has some merit, but is not 

 wholly free from the inaccuracies common to the early treatises., 



The passage devoted to the beaver in Hornaday's American Natural 



History^ is excellent so far as it goes, but is 

 necessarily brief, and so leaves much unsaid. 

 There is a longer description in Ingersoll's 

 The Life of Animals {Mammals) ,% which is 

 equally trustworthy. In Richardson's Fauna 

 Boreali Americana, in the works of Coues 

 and Allen and J. K. Lord, and in the Ameri- 

 can Naturalist for 1877 and 1878 are good 

 delineations of the beaver's habits. 



Three books have been published in this 

 country treating exclusively upon the beaver, 

 and one in Canada. These are: 

 The American Beaver and His Works, by Lewis H. Morgan. Philadelphia: J. B. 



Lippincott & Co., 1868. 

 Beavers: Their Ways, by Joseph H. Taylor. Washburn, N. D.: published by the 



author, 1903. 2d ed., revised and enlarged, 1906. 

 Shaggycoat; the Biography of a Beaver, by Clarence Hawkes. Philadelphia : George 



W. Jacobs & Co., 1906. 

 Castorologia; or, The History and Traditions of the Canadian Beaver, by Horace T. 

 Martin, F. Z. S. Montreal: William Drysdale & Co., 1892. 



All of these have considerable merit, particularly the first, which is a 

 reference work of the highest class and thoroughly reliable. Beavers: 



THE "POND DOG" (BEAVER). 



ILLUSTRATING UNRELIABILITY AND EXTRAVAGANCE 

 OF EARLY DESCRIPTIONS. 



From an old print, 1755. 



* In The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society [of London] Delineated. Quadrupeds. 

 Vol. I, p. 153. 



f Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1904. 

 X Published by The Macmillan Company, New York, 1906. 



