42 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
the water-dog, an evidence of its aboriginal nativity 
in Scotland; and its existence in Britain is noticed 
in a romance not anterior to the twelfth century,™ of 
which the materials were probably derived from 
Wales. 
It must be confessed that the written records we 
have of its occurrence are very fragmentary, and not 
wholly satisfactory ; but abundant evidence of its 
former existence in this country at a date long 
anterior to these historical notices is supplied by the 
remains of the animal which have been exhumed in 
various places, both in England and Scotland. 
In the third volume of the “‘ Memoirs of the Wer- 
nerian Nat. Hist. Society” (1821, p. 207), is.an 
account by the late Dr. Neill of some remains of 
Beavers found in Perthshire at the Loch of Marlee, 
Kinloch, and in Middlestots Bog, Kimmerghame, in 
Berwickshire.t Another skull exhumed at Linton, 
in Roxburghshire, is preserved in the 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 at Mun- 
desley, Bacton, and Happesburg, Norfolk, in the 
fluvio-marine crag near Southwold, Suffolk, in the 
peat near Newbury,§ and in the Thames Valley at 
Crossness Point, near Erith. | 
* Fragment of the “ Romance of Sir Tristram,” MS. in the Douce 
Collection, No. 2. 
+ See, also, Dr. C. Wilson, ‘On the Prior Existence of the Castor 
fiber in Scotland,’ Hdinb. New Phil. Jowrn., 1858, N.S., vol. viii. 
f£ “Proc. Berwicks. Nat. Club,” vol. ii. p. 48. 
§ Collet, “* Phil. Trans,,” 1757, p. 112. 
|| Boyd Dawkins, Popular Science Nevieiv, 1868, p. 39. 
