THE BEAVER 677 
vaguest or no significance ; at most one will be told ‘a kind of otter.’” 
He adds :—“ One cannot but infer that the existence of the beaver in 
Scotland must be relegated to a very remote period indeed, and that 
they were extinct long before the time when they disappeared from 
Wales. Possibly, too, they may have been always sparsely distributed, 
and confined to a few favoured localities.” It is sufficient to say here 
that we are in full agreement with these conclusions. 
The history of the Beaver in western continental Europe resembles 
that which we have traced in Britain. The animal was widespread, 
although apparently scarce, during the Pleistocene. It became quite 
common in the Neolithic period, when it appears to have played no 
unimportant part in bringing about the swampy conditions favouring 
the growth of peat. Its remains have been found, in abundance and at 
a large number of localities, beneath the peat-mosses of Skandinavia, 
Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. In Denmark it 
became extinct before the historic period! Elsewhere, in face of 
advancing civilisation, and partly because of direct persecution, colony 
after colony has vanished, and the species has been brought close to 
total extinction. In the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth 
centuries, although its numbers had greatly diminished, colonies were 
to be found in favourable localities scattered over a very large portion 
of its former range. At the present time, so far as Western Europe is 
concerned, the Beaver is found only in South-western Norway, in the 
Elbe, and in the delta of the Rhone. In each of these localities it now 
enjoys theoretically complete protection. Of these living colonies, 
the Norwegian are the most important; Collett says several hundred 
individuals must be living there, and their numbers are not at present 
decreasing.” 
The former wide distribution of the Beaver in continental Europe 
is witnessed, in all countries save Iberia, by a very large number of 
place-names ; lists of these will be found in Linstow’s paper cited above. 
Distribution in time:—The geological history of C. filer has 
been discussed under History and Distribution. The earliest known 
1 Winge, Vidensk. Medd. Naturh. Foren. Koibenhavn, 1904, 224 and 303; and 
Collett, Vorges Pattedyr, 188. 
2 For a valuable summary of facts relating to former and present distribution of 
Beavers and for Bibliography, see O. von Linstow, Die Verbrettung des Bibers im 
Quartir. Abh. u. Ber. Mus. Nat. Heimatk. Magdeburg, 1908, 1., 213-387. For 
accounts of living colonies the following may be referred to :—A. H. Cocks, Zoologist, 
1880, 233, 497 ; 1881, 54; 1882, 15; 1885, 479; Collett, Myt Mag. f. Naturvidensk., 
1883, p. 11; 1898, 35; Bergens Mus. Aarbog, 1897, and Norges Pattedyr, 1911, 186 ; 
Harting, Zoologzst, 1886, 265 ; 1888, 182, 260; Mitford, zdzd., 1896, 184; Mingaud, 
zbid., 1896, 184; Bull. Soc. Et. Sc. Nat. Nimes, 1906 to 1910. The colony in the 
delta of the Rhone must be one of the most interesting in the world, for since there 
is little or no timber at hand, the Beavers must lead what is practically the life of 
a huge Water Rat. Nine captured when the water fell to an unusually low level in 
