12 J. E. HAETING — ANIMALS WHICH HATE BECOME 



the animal wliicli have heen dug up in various places both in 

 England and Scotland. 



In the ' Memoirs of the "Wernerian Natural History Society ' * 

 will be found an account by the late Dr. JS^eill, of some fossil remains 

 of beavers found in Perthshire and Berwickshire.! Skulls of this 

 animal exhumed in Koxburgh are preserved in the Natural History 

 Museum at Kelso. Other remains of beavers, considered to be 

 identical with the species found in North America at the present day, 

 have been discovered in the fluvio-marine Crag near Southwold, 

 Suffolk. 



The species has occurred in a fossil state in Cambridgeshire, J and 

 at one time, it would seem, this animal must have been pretty 

 common in the eastern counties of England. Mr. Skertchly, in 

 his remarks on the prehistoric fauna of the fens,§ says: " The re- 

 mains of the beaver are tolerably abundant in the fens," and further 

 on, " So far as my observation goes, the beaver did not build dams 

 in the fens, owing, in all probability, to the abundance of still water. 

 The late J. K. Lord, himself an experienced trapper, informed me 

 that in North America the beaver only constructs dams in running 

 streams, and chooses still waters where possible to save the labour of 

 architecture." Mr. F. Buckland has a fine specimen of a beaver's 

 jaw, not fossil, which was dug up in a fen in Lincolnshire, and 

 other remains of this animal have been exhumed from the peat 

 near Newbury, Berks, || and at Crossness Point on the south side of 

 the Thames, near Erith.^ Pennant refers to a complete head of a 

 beaver, with the teeth entire, which was found in the peat at 

 Pomsey, Hants,"^'* and various portions of the skeleton have been 

 discovered in Kent's Hole, Devonshire, the only British cave which 

 has hitherto yielded the remains of beavers.f f 



Eossil remains of an extinct beaver closely allied to, but much 

 larger than, the existing species, have been found in the Norwich 

 Crag at Cromer. Professor Owen has described it under the name 

 Trogontherium Cuv ieri. 



The town of Beverley, in Yorkshire, is said to have derived its 

 name from the number of beavers found in the vicinity, when, in 

 the eighth century (about 710), St. John of Beverley built his 

 hermitage there, the foundation of the town. The stream on which 

 the town was built was then called in Anglo-Saxon Beofor-leag, or 

 " the beaver's lea," but this has become softened down into its present 

 jjronunciation and spelling. " The town," says Leland, " hath yn 



* Vol. iii, p. 207 (1821). 



t See also Dr. C. Wilson, "On the Prior Existence of the Castor Jiber va. 

 Scotland," 'Eclinb. New Phil. Journal,' 1858, N.S. vol. vii. 



X Jenyns, ' British Vertebrate Animals,' p. 34. 



§ ' The Fenland, Past and Present,' p. 348. 



il Elliot, 'Phil. Trans.' 1757, p. 112. 



f Boyd Dawkins, ' Popular Science Review,' 1868, p. 39. 



** ' British Zoology,' vol. i, p. 60, note (ed. 1812). 



ft Penge'ly, " On the Ossiferous Caverns of Devonshire," 'Report Brit. Assoc' 

 1869 and 1877. 



