48 EXTINCT BRITISH ANIMALS. 
alarm. Besides the vegetable food they pick up, 
they are fed principally with willow boughs, the bark 
of which they are said to strip off with the neatness 
of a basket-maker. 
Mr. Charles Hockin, who spent a fortnight, durmg 
the summer of 1879, at the primitive little village of 
Kilchattan Bay, in the Isle of Bute (which is only 
about a couple of miles from the Marquis of Bute’s 
Beaver ponds), has been kind enough to supply us 
with the following account of his visit :— 
‘The Beavers have, I am informed by their keeper, 
increased considerably in number during the last few 
years, and numbered in 1878 about twenty-seven or 
twenty-eight, and there are, it is believed, eight or 
ten more this year; certainly, judging by their 
works, they are increasing. They have now five or 
six weirs, or dams, across the stream, of which the 
second largest was partially carried away by the 
floods of the late spring, and now displays, in its 
section where cut off by the water, the wonderful 
cleverness of these interesting little engineers. 
“ The largest dam they have constructed is about a 
hundred and twenty feet in length, and gives a depth 
of water in the pond above it of some eight or nine 
feet. It is arched against the stream in a manner 
showing almost human ingenuity, taking advantage 
of one or two trees, which originally must have stood 
on the very edge of the stream (a mere rivulet) ; 
it is built up of logs varying from two to four feet in 
length, and from one to four or five inches in diameter, 
worked together and filled in with mud, and 
