THE BEAVER EATER. 811 



channels the conveyancing of the kingdom largely flowed, and 

 the livery of seisin dropped into comparative desuetude. By 

 later statutes, principally of the present reign, the ceremony and 

 many of its related rules have been finally abolished. It was 

 never practiced to any considerable extent in this country, which 

 was not colonized until after the statute of uses. 



Although the idea that there could be no estate in land with- 

 out possession was so inextricably interwoven with the doctrines 

 of the common law that escape from its meshes was impossible 

 except by resort to legislation, the popular conceptions upon the 

 subject, being comparatively unhampered, underwent necessa- 

 rily a much more rapid change, so that in the popular sense or 

 judgment interests in land, independently of the possession, ex- 

 isted centuries before it was possible for them to receive legal 

 recognition. Finally, even to the most technical of lawyers, the 

 old view came to seem like scarcely more than a legal fiction. In 

 its direct applications it has now almost disappeared from our 

 law. Its ejfects are simply ineflcaceable. The time will never be 

 when the legal doctrines of the English-speaking race will not 

 still present numberless peculiarities of structure inherited from 

 t^is prolific old juristic root. 



THE BEAVER EATER. 



By HORACE T. MAKTIN, F. Z. S., Etc. 



A VOCABULARY of the Chippeway Indians in J. Long's 

 Voyages and Travels (1791) conveys a slight knowledge of 

 the fur trader's vernacular of just a century ago. The records 

 ofl:er many attractions to the naturalist, acquainting him with the 

 curious Indian names for animals, together with their English 

 equivalents, and exhibiting the original forms of many words 

 familiar now only in a modified or corrupted state. In this vo- 

 cabulary the Indian word quickwahay is translated "beaver 

 eater," and neither of the terms being current to-day in natural 

 history, they suggest a field for investigation. 



To discover the truths which are the foundation of most 

 fables is a task both useful and interesting, and the curious facts 

 which underlie the fabulous history of the animal about to re- 

 ceive our consideration illustrate this rule in an extreme degree. 

 If a bad name be sufficient excuse for hanging a dog, what should 

 be the fate of that animal whose evil names outnumber his 

 digits ? Probably no animal has ever possessed a longer list of 

 synonyms, and none could possibly possess worse. The first 

 written accounts of our subject date back to Olaus Magnus 



