THE BEAVER. 41 
remarks (par. ui cap. v.), “ Boethius dicit Fibrum seu 
Castorem in Scotia reperiri, an nunc reperiatur 
nescio.” 
It is more than probable, says Dr. Robert Brown, 
that the worthy historians were influenced by a little 
of the natural pride of country—the “ perfervidum 
ingentum Scotorum ”—when they recorded the Beaver 
as an inhabitant of Loch Ness in the fifteenth 
century, since no mention is made of it in an Act of 
Parliament dated June, 1424, although “ mertricks, 
foumartes, otters, and toddis” are specified. They 
were perhaps so strongly impressed by the wide- 
spread tradition of its existence in former days as to 
lead them to enumerate it among the animals of 
Scotland, and it may be observed that the authors 
quoted boast immoderately of the productions of their 
country. At the beginning of the century (at least) 
the Highlanders had a peculiar name for the animal 
—LTLosleathan* or Dobhran losleathan, the Broad- 
tailed Otter ; and, according to Dr. Stewart of Luss, 
in a letter to the late Dr. Patrick Neill, Secretary of 
the Wernerian Society of Natural History, a tradi- 
tion used to exist that the Beaver, or Broad-tailed 
Otter, once lived in Lochaber. 
Of the Beaver in Scotland, says Stuart,t there is 
later testimony than of the Bear. Like that animal, 
it has left in its radical Gaelic name, Dobhar-Chu,t 
* Compare the Welsh Llostlydan. 
+ “Lays of the Deer Forest,” vol. 11. p. 216. 
~ In the modern confusion of obsolete terms, this name is some- 
times confounded with that of the Otter, which is Dobhar-an.— 
Stuart, op. cit. 
