Bennett's article on the beaver. 317 



APPENDIX C. 



Bennett's Article on the Beaver. 



From "The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society Delineated." 

 Quadrupeds. Vol. i. p. 153. Published iu 1835. 



THE BEAVER. 



(^Castor Fiber, Linn.) 



Among the numerous, widely dispersed, and prolific tribes of 

 animals which compose the extremely natural order, called by 

 Linnajus and the writers of his school Glires, there are none 

 perhaps which possess so many claims on our attention as the 

 well-marked and circumscribed little group on the history of 

 which we are about to enter. The beavers, in fact, interest us 

 not only as furnishing a most valuable fur, and producing a pe- 

 culiar secretion occasionally and advantageously employed in 

 medicine, but also as offering the most remarkable of the few in- 

 stances occurring among quadrupeds of that architectural instinct, 

 so remarkably prevalent in the inferior classes, which impels them 

 to construct their own habitations with materials selected for the 

 purpose, brought from a distance, and cemented together so as to 

 form a regular and uniform structure. 



The first and most essential character of the order to which 

 they belong is obviously derived from the great development of 

 their incisor teeth ; and this peculiarity in structure, as might 

 naturally be expected, is connected with a peculiarity in habits 

 equally remarkable. So striking, indeed, is the propensity to 

 gnawing, which distinguishes these animals, that many late zoolo- 

 gists, of the French school especially, have thrown aside the older 

 designation applied to them by LinnaBus, and adopted in its place 

 the expressive name of Rongeurs or Rodentia. Of this faculty 

 the beavers appear to exhibit the highest degree of devel- 

 opment ; their powerful incisor teeth not only serving them to 

 strip off and divide the bark of trees, which forms their principal 

 nutriment, but also enabling them, when urged by their instinct 

 of construction, to gnaw through trunks of considerable thick- 

 ness, and thus to obtain the timber of which they stand in need 



