1 56 
MAMMALIA. 
I am informed by William Clowbridge, an old hunter and trap- 
per, that during his boyhood Beavers were common along the 
western border of the Adirondacks. In the year 1819 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 un- 
usually forward, and that there was some open water along the 
north shore of the lake, and about its 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 unsuc- 
cessful in his attempts to capture this same Beaver, and who was 
then about to leave this part of the Wilderness, 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. 
Dr. DeKay, writing in 1841, says: “ In the summer of 1840, we 
traversed those almost interminable forests on the highlands sepa- 
rating the sources of the Hudson and St. Lawrence, and included 
in Hamilton, Herkimer, and a part of Essex counties. In the 
