670 CASTORIDAZE—CASTOR 
Old World formerly covered the whole of the forested region of 
Eurasia, from Lapland and Northern Russia southwards to Spain, 
Italy, and the Euphrates, and from Great Britain eastwards at least as 
far as the Lena. The Asiatic limits of its distribution are, however, 
still imperfectly known. 
The remarkabie habits and powers of the Beaver, its appearance, 
its beautiful fur, and its possession of castoreum—that secretion which 
through long ages was regarded by physicians as a panacea—could 
not fail to attract human attention from the very earliest times. 
Accordingly we find the animal described or noticed in many of the 
most ancient writings which have survived to our day, while etymological 
research indicates that the name “ beaver” itself dates from a time far 
beyond the reach of any documentary evidence in our possession. 
In this place only a few of the more salient facts can be mentioned, but 
reference may be made to the great essay on the Beaver by Brandt,' who 
dealt exhaustively with the classical references and commentaries, and 
for the first time collected the many scattered fruits of previous research. 
The word “beaver” is in one form or another common to all the 
Indo-Germanic languages, and it is traceable, with its equivalents the 
Sanskrit dabhru, the old Persian dadvara or badara, and the nearly 
allied Arabic wzverra, to the Old Aryan debhrus : the latter, according to 
the Vew English Dictionary, is a reduplicated derivative of dzru=brown, 
with sense of “brown” or “red-brown” or “brown water animal.” 
It does not follow, therefore, that in every instance, when using a 
derivative of debhrus, early writers were speaking of the Beaver. Any 
brown fur-bearing animal would be a “beaver” to the earliest Aryans. 
Gradually the use of the word was limited solely to such brown fur- 
bearing animals as were of aquatic habits, and during this period it 
signified not merely the Beaver, but the Otter, Ichneumon, and Water 
Rat as well. This comparatively restricted meaning was acquired 
certainly by the time the sacred writings of the old Persian and Indian 
peoples were written, for in them “beavers” are clearly indicated as 
water-dwellers and their killing is expressly forbidden. In fact, as 
regards certain of the Persian documents, both Spiegel and Brandt 
were inclined to think that the context showed that dadvara really 
indicated the Beaver and no other animal, and that, therefore, the word 
had acquired, between 300 and 400 B.C., its modern fully restricted 
significance. 
The ancient Greek writers called the Beaver yaorwp or castor, and 
its peculiar secretion yaotopiov. The words castor and castoreum 
appear to be connected with and perhaps are derived from the Indian 
kasturi or kastora, which signify the musk-glands and secretion of the 
Musk Deer, JZoschus. These glands have a somewhat similar appear- 
1), F. Brandt, Wem. Sc. Nat. Imp. Acad., St Petersburg, vii., 1855, 78 and 339. 
