402 REPORT OF THE FOREST, FISK AND GAME COMMISSIONER. 



' They were' not immediately exterminated, however, for Mr. Calvin 

 V. Graves writes me that in 1834 a trapper named Hume caught six beavers 

 in Silverdog Pond, in the northeastern part of the town of Diana, in Lewis 

 county, and that a few years later Norman and Hume caught three beavers 

 on the middle branch of the Oswegatchie, near Harris ville. These are 

 believed to have been the last beavers which inhabited that part of the 

 wilderness. 



" I am informed by William Clowbridge, an old hunter and trapper, 

 that during his boyhood beavers were common along the western border 

 of the Adirondacks. In the year 181 9 he caught two in one of their huts 

 on the outlet of Brantingham Lake, in Lewis county, on which stream they 

 had then two dams. In March, 1837, he caught at Little Otter Lake, also 

 in Lewis county, the last beaver observed on this side of the Adirondacks. 

 The veteran hunter, Asa Puffer, was at the time trapping for the same 

 animal. Mr. Clowbridge tells me that the spring was unusually forward, 

 and that there was some open water along the north shore of the lake, and 

 about the outlet. He made a small opening in the dam, and in the gap 

 thus formed set his trap, a few inches below the surface of the water. On 

 returning to the lake, a week afterward, an eagle was seen to rise and fly 

 away from the vicinity of the outlet. Proceeding to the dam he could find 

 neither the trap nor the weight to which it had been attached. He then 

 went to the spot from which the eagle rose and there found the beaver in 

 the trap. 



" Mr. John Constable has kindly presented me with the skull of a very 

 large beaver which was ' trapped by William Wood, in the fall of 1837, in 

 a pond northwest of Indian Point on the Raquette.' Mr. Constable writes 

 me that an old Indian who had been unsuccessful in his attempts to capture 

 this same beaver, and who was then about to leave this part of the wilder- 

 ness, told Wood where the animal was to be found. Wood carried his boat 

 to the pond and paddled twice around it, searching carefully for signs, 

 without going ashore. At last he discovered fur upon the root of an old 

 birch that projected into the water. Here he placed the trap, attached 

 to a float, and on the second day found the beaver in it."* 



* Mammals of the Adirondacks, p. 254. 



