CASTOR1D.E— CASTOR— CASTOR FIBER. 445 



canus " of Cuvier "* being proposed some five years subsequently. Yet by 

 Richardson, Audubon and Bach man, Brandt, Morgan and Ely, and others, 

 the later name has been adopted in preference to the earlier one of Kuhl. 

 For the Old World Beaver, the original Linnaean name^fer has been by some 

 rejected for the later one, europceus, used by Owen. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



The Beaver family existed in North America as far south along the 

 Atlantic seaboard as Georgia and Northern Florida.f It also occurred 

 throughout the Gulf States nearly as far south as the Gulf coast, and in Texas 

 to the Rio Grande. Its exact limit south of the Rio Grande I have not been 

 able to determine ; but that its range extended for some distance into Mexico 

 is well ascertained. The collection of the National Museum contains speci- 

 mens from Franklin County, Mississippi, the Lower Rio Grande, and Santa 

 Clara, California, and Dr. CouesJ gives it as an inhabitant of Arizona. It is 

 abundant in Alaska, and in the interior extends to the Barren Grounds; its 

 northern limit being apparently coincident with the northern limit of forests. 

 Its present range, however, is much less extended, very few being found east 

 of the Mississippi River south of the Great Lakes, and it is tar less numer- 

 ous everywhere than formerly. Some still remain in Northern Maine and 

 in the Adirondack region of New York, and probably some still survive thence 

 southward in the sparsely-settled districts to Alabama and Mississippi. A 

 recent article in "Forest and Stream" (vol. vi, No. 13, p. 197, Nov. 2, 1876) 

 states that they are still abundant in portions of Virginia.§ Their former 



* The name Castor americanus is universally attributed to F. Cuvier, but I aiu uuable to fiud it any- 

 where used in bis writings. In his " Hist. Nat. des Marnmiferes", he uses the common name only, — "Le 

 Castor du Canada", — yet this work is usually cited as the origin of the specific name " americanus " as 

 applied to the American Beaver. 



t Bartram, Travels, p. 281. 



t Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 1867, p. 135 ; Am. Nat., vol. i, p. St>2. 



§ The above-cited article mentions particularly Dinwid'ie, Nottoway, Brunswick, Cumberland, 

 and Greenville Counties, where it says beaver-trapping has of late been again profitably pursued. " For 

 instance," says this account, " there is the veteran trap-maker, Mr. Newhouse, who made his headquarters 

 in Greenville County last winter; he realized some $900 by his expedition, besides selling several hundred 

 dollars' worth of steel traps. And two of our subscribers from Connecticut, and others from Central New 

 York, went down o Brunswick and Nottoway, and when they had harvested their packs of pelts and 

 were ready to leave, taught tho native young ' chiucopins' and negroes to set traps, so that they, too, 

 might add to their scanty earnings. More than one small farmer has had occasion to bless the strangers 



who came among them and showed them how to catch fur Besides putting money into their 



own purse, the trapper in Virginia will do the residents a great service by killing of t.he ' vermin' that 

 destroy their crops, and thereby save as well as earn. We have ourselves seen acres of corn totally 

 destroyed by the Beavers down there, and we know that the havoc they make with the grain causes 

 a serious loss to needy and struggling people." This advertisement of the abundance of the Beavers in 

 Virginia will doubtless result in their rapid numerical decrease, if not speedy total extirpatiou, through 

 excessive persecution, unless the authorities of Virginia should have the wisdom to interpose legal pro- 

 tection for the otherwise doomed animals. 



