400 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 



posts, and mercilessly trapped by Red and White alike, could not long 

 maintain their existence in this narrow area, especially as this animal, 

 so sagacious in many respects, is very easy to capture — much more so 

 than the majority of the fur-bearing animals. In this fact we have an 

 explanation of why the beaver, once so abundant, has been entirely extir- 

 pated in localities where all the other native mammals are still found. 



It should be mentioned in passing that, while the beaver was sought 

 primarily to supply the hat manufacturers with its fine, soft wool (which 

 was clipped from the hide and pressed into felt), this was not the only 

 product which had commercial value. The shaved skins themselves were 

 utilized in the manufacture of glue, the oil was used for several purposes, 

 and the castoreum, a mucilaginous secretion found in two pear-shaped sacs 

 immediately below the pubis, had been highly valued in medicine for ages. 



About 1794 the Indians discovered the remarkable virtue of castoreum 

 as a bait for beaver, and almost at the same time steel traps began to be 

 generally used. These two very effective innovations sealed the doom of 

 the Adirondack beaver, and before the second decade of the next century 

 had elapsed it had been practically annihilated in that region. 



Timely 3ctl>stitatton of Nutria 



It is probable that in the year 1800 there were not 5,000 beavers in the 

 entire area of Northern New York, and that by 1820 the number had been 

 diminished to less than 1,000. The same rapid course of extermination 

 was in progress throughout the entire continent, and it is evident that, 

 long before the outbreak of our American Civil War, the historic beaver 

 of this State would have been as completely extinct as the Irish elk or the 

 dodo, had not the timely discovery been made that the fur of the South 

 American coypu was as good as, if not superior to, that of the beaver for 

 the manufacture of hats. Martin says: 



' The river rat, or coypu, as it is called by the natives, is in many ways 

 the intermediate species between the musquash [muskrat] and the beaver, 

 and having been known as the ' Castors of La Plata,' might appropriately 

 be named the South American beaver. It inhabited chiefly Brazil, Chili 

 and La Plata, where it is very numerous ; it is the only known representative 



