THE PENOKEE IRON RANGE. 
399 
Roche” was found; a plant that has probably saved some per¬ 
sons from starvation, though anything less would hardly induce 
one to eat of it. A beautiful little fragrant fern was found, 
which differed so much from the character given in the books of 
Aspidium fragrans, that I was induced to improve a favorable 
opportunity to send it to Sir Win. J. Hooker, director of the 
Royal Gardens at Kew, near London, who writes that it is a 
variety of that species precisely identical with one he had him¬ 
self found on the Caucassian Alps ! 
Among the wild animals still inhabiting this part of Wiscon¬ 
sin, not the least interesting is the beaver, whose existence was 
revealed to us by the trees that had been cut with its sharp 
teeth. One tree thus cut down was found to be nineteen and 
three-fourths inches in diameter; but those we saw on the 
banks of the Bad river, mostly of birch and maple, were from 
two to five inches in diameter. Many of these animals are an¬ 
nually caught by the Indians. They seldom build dams across 
streams, as in more remote regions, being of the variety called 
“bank beaver,” that are contented to dwell on the banks of 
rivers and lakes. 
An enumeration of the animals found here, large and small, 
would include the little black bat, a mole about the size of the 
common rat; two species of mice, neither of them the common 
domestic mouse; the thirteen striped gopher, so abundant in 
the south part of the State; the gray, red, and striped squir. 
rel; the rabbit; the black bear, martin, fisher, mink, otter and 
weasel; the gray wolf, the red fox, and the cross fox, which is 
red with a stripe of black on his back and down his legs; the 
silver-gray fox, the lynx, and the musk-rat; the deer; the por¬ 
cupine, very abundant about the rocks of the Range; the wood, 
chuck; and as I was informed, last, though not least, the 
moose. 
Thus it appears that we have, in the northern part of Wis¬ 
consin, a region abounding in undeveloped mineral wealth, with 
iron ores exceeding in amount perhaps any other in the w r orld; 
copper has been found in some localities, arid is believed by 
