HISTORY OF THE ADIRONDACK BEAVER. 409 



dian exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, at St. Louis. Through 

 the generosity and public spirit of the Brown's Tract Guides' Association,* 

 an arrangement was entered into whereby these beavers were kept through 

 the winter at the State Fish Hatchery, at Old Forge on the Fulton Chain, 

 the guides paying the expenses of their keep and care. 



state's Temporary Enclosure at Old Forge 



Mr. Henry Davidson, then foreman of the hatchery, and Guide Ned 

 Ball.t now State Game Protector, devised a very ingenious method of 

 keeping the beavers. A cement rearing pond, located on the hatchery 

 grounds, about fort}" feet long and ten feet wide, fed by running water, 

 which stood fourteen inches deep in the pond, was given over to the new 

 arrivals. This was surrounded by a wire screen fence of three-eighths- inch 

 mesh, two and one-half feet high, which was made to lean inward over the 

 pond at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, to prevent the beavers from 

 climbing over. Even then, it was necessary to watch them closely, and 

 several times during the winter they came very near escaping. 



At one end of the pond a very comfortable house was erected of pine 

 lumber, covered with tar paper. This was set up on legs over the pond, so 

 that the floor was just above the water's level. In the center of the floor 



* Too much cannot be said in praise of the public spirit and intelligent zeal of the members of 

 this organization, and particularly of their painstaking and indefatigable secretary, Mr. A. M. Church, 

 to whose influence was due largely the success of the plan for keeping the beavers at Old Forge through 

 the winter. Mr. Church is a woodsman of long and wide experience, and, being also a taxidermist, 

 his practical knowledge of wild animals is very great. His services to the cause of Adirondack game 

 and forest preservation have been legion. 



It is a pleasure to record the universal esteem in which this association of woodsmen and guides 

 is held in the section over which its operations extend. The writer is under obligation to its officers 

 and members for unnumbered favors and courtesies shown him during the past eight years. 



t Xed Ball is one of the best known members of the Brown's Tract Guides' Association, and 

 is a game protector by natural inheritance, his father and grandfather having been keepers on the 

 English estate of the Duke of Buccleuch. Xed has had more experience than any other person in 

 handling and liberating live game animals in the Adirondacks for the State — moose, wapiti, and 

 beaver. What he doesn't know about the Adirondack woods and their wild inhabitants is not gen- 

 erally learned in the course of a lifetime. 



