22 THE BEAVER 
HISTORICAL 
The word ‘‘beaver” in one form or another is common 
to Indo-Germanic languages, and is traceable to the Old 
Aryan bebhrus. The old Persian badvara was used to signify 
the beaver between 300 and 400 B.C. Some, at least, of the 
ancient Greek writers had a personal knowledge of the 
animal. Dante, writing in 1310, refers to the beaver in 
the Inferno. In fact the animal lived in the Po as late as 
the sixteenth century. 
“The beaver was undoubtedly a very common British 
mammal in the later prehistoric periods, and to its activities 
we may owe some very striking features of the present 
British landscape.’? The fens may have been due to the 
destruction of the natural drainage by dams and fallen 
tree trunks. The destruction of the Pennine woodland and 
the formation of the peat mosses of Lancashire, were the 
work of the beaver. 
“Apart from human persecution, it is perhaps doubtful 
whether a small island like Britain could have long con- 
tinued to support a large population of beavers.’ It prob- 
ably did not become extinct on that island before the 
thirteenth century. 
Gerald deBarri, better known as Geraldus Cambrensis, 
traveled in Wales in 1188 and wrote of the beaver there, 
describing the construction of their houses. He speaks of 
their making communications from floor to floor, as if there 
were more than one story to the structures. ‘The houses are 
said to be built of willows and other kinds of wood, and differ- 
ent kinds of leaves. Mud is not mentioned in the translation. 
“In the course of time, their habitations bear the appear- 
ance of a grove of willow trees, rude and natural without, 
but artfully constructed within.” 
? A History of British Mammals, Barrett-Hamilton and Hinton. 
