264 MAMMALS. 



fessor Braudt, of St. Petersburg, has carefully worked out the subject, and the reader will find 

 full details in his work on Russian Mammals.* 



Our Castor fiber, the Old-world Beaver, formerly inhabited the whole of Europe and Western 

 Asia. It is now almost extinguished from the former, a few only still remaining in some parts of 

 Germany, and perhaps on the Rhone, in France. The race, although so nearly extinct, has been 

 preserved in Austria by the Austrian Emperor, in at least one of his extensive joarks on the 

 banks of the Danube. It is now probably extinguished in Sweden and Norway. Blyth records a 

 specimen obtained from Norway in 1844, as being one of only two which had been killed in that 

 country during the preceding twenty j^ears. Some still sur\'ive in Poland and Russia. It is not 

 found in the south of Europe, or on the Mediterranean or Black Sea, but still exists in considerable 

 n umbers in the streams of the Ural Mountains, and in those of the Caspian Sea, extending 

 into Tartary. It is not found in Eastern Siberia, neither Herr Radde nor Schrenck ha-\-ing 

 foimd any trace of it, or learning anythiag to lead to the belief that it had ever lived in that 

 district, orAmourland; with the single exception that "it is said" that the Russo- American Fur 

 Company obtained a skin in 1853-4, at their temporary station at the south end of Saghalien. 

 Such an exception, unaccompanied as it is by any tangible fact, is verj'' tantalising. The 

 skin might have been an American one, or one brought by some far-travelled hunter from West 

 Siberia. In ignorance of these points, nay, in uncertainty whether it was a Beaver's skin at all, the 

 statement onlj' serves to throw a haze of doubt on any conclusions drawn from the absence of the 

 Beaver in that part of Asia. 



Castor Canadensis. The American Beaver has a very wide distribution through North America. 

 It formerly extended over the whole contiaent, from sea to sea, but it is now very rare east of the 

 Missouri. A few are still found in the Adirondac region of New York ; in the Alleghanies of 

 Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and even Alabama. They extend from the Arctic Circle to 

 the Tropic of Cancer (68° to 26° N. lat.) They are found in the Gila and the Rio Grande, and 

 reach the mouth of that river (iu 26° N. lat.) In former times it was extremely abimdant, but 

 the great demand for, and high price of, its fur for hats, induced an extensive trade in it, which 

 caused it rapidly to diminish. The substitution of silk in the manufacture of hats, and the introduc- 

 tion of the fur of the Nutria (American Otter) and Coypu (Myopotamus Coypus) of South America, 

 has, however, reduced its price so much (they were offered to Dr. Newberry's party by the bale, 

 at 25 cents each), that, according to Dr. Baird, beaver-fur now scarcely pays the expenses of the 

 systematic and laborious pursuit on the part of the trapper which is required to obtain it ; and, in 

 consequence, the animal is again multiplying rapidlj^ and the western streams becoming well 

 stocked. 



Numerous fossil remains of both the li\ing species have been found ; those of the Old World 

 in England and other parts of Europe ; those of the New World in especial abundance in the 

 bone-caves of Pennsylvania, showing that they must have lived there formerly in great numbers. 



Two remarkable animals of tho Beaver tribe, but considerably larger, formerly inhabited Europe 

 and North America, respectively, — the Trogontherium and Castoroides. They are both now extinct, 

 but seem to have been contemporary with the Beaver. Their remains have been discovered in peat- 

 bogs and lacustrine deposits posterior to the drift. The American genus, Castoroides, was much 



* Brandt, Prof. " Beitriige zur uahcru Kentuniss dcr in " Memoires Mathom. Pliys. et Natur. dc I'Acad. Sc. St. 

 Saugethiere Kussiauds St. Petersburg." 1855. 4to. And Petersburg." vol. vii. 



