CASTORIDAIK—CASTOR—CASTOR FIBER. 445 
canus “of Cuvier ”* being proposed some five years subsequently. Yet by 
Richardson, Audubon and Bachman, Brandt, Morgan and Ely, and others, 
the later name has been adopted in preference to the earlier one of Kuhl. 
For the Old World Beaver, the original Linnean name fiber has been by some 
rejected for the later one, europaeus, used by Owen. 
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 
The Beaver family existed in North America as far south along the 
Atlantic seaboard as Georgia and Northern Florida. It also occurred 
throughout the Gulf States nearly as far south as the Gulf coast, and in Texas 
to the Rio Grande. Its exact limit south of the Rio Grande I have not been 
able to determine ; but that its range extended for some distance into Mexico 
is well ascertained. ‘The collection of the National Museum contains speci- 
mens from Franklin County, Mississippi, the Lower Rio Grande, and Santa 
Clara, California, and Dr. Couesf gives it as an inhabitant of Arizona. It is 
abundant in Alaska, and in the interior extends to the Barren Grounds; its 
northern limit being apparently coincident with the northern limit of forests. 
Its present range, however, is much less extended, very few being found east 
of the Mississippi River south of the Great Lakes, and it is far less numer- 
ous everywhere than formerly. Some still remain in Northern Maine and 
in the Adirondack region of New York, and probably some still survive thence 
southward in the sparsely-settled districts to Alabama and Mississippi. A 
recent article in ‘Forest and Stream” (vol. vi, No. 13, p. 197, Nov. 2, 1876) 
states that they are still abundant in portions of Virginia.) Their former 
* *The name Castor americanus is universally attributed to F. Cuvier, but I am unable to find it any- 
where used in his writings. In his “ Hist. Nat. des Mammiféres”, he uses the common name only,—“Le 
Castor du Canada”,—yet this work is usually cited as the origin of the specific name “ americanus” as 
applied to the American Beaver. 
t Bartram, Travels, p. 281. 
{ Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philad., 1867, p. 135; Am. Nat., vol..i, p. 562. 
§ The above-cited article mentions particularly Dinwiddie, Nottoway, Brunswick, Cumberland, 
and Greenville Counties, where it says beaver-trapping has of late been again profitably pursued. ‘Tor 
instance,” says this account, ‘ there is the veteran trap-maker, Mr. Newhouse, who made bis headquarters 
in Greenville County last winter; he realized some $900 by his expedition, besides selling several hundred 
dollars’ worth of steel traps. And two of our subscribers from Connecticut, and others from Central New 
York, went down to Brunswick and Nottoway, and when they had harvested their packs of pelts and 
were ready to leave, taught the native young ‘chincopins’ and negroes to set traps, so that they, too, 
might add to their scanty earnings. More than one small farmer has had occasion to bless the strangers 
who came among them and showed them how to catch fur. ..... Besides putting money into their 
own purse, the trapper in Virginia will do the residents a great service by killing of the ‘ vermin’ that 
destroy their crops, and thereby save as well as earn. We have ourselves seen acres of corn totally 
destroyed by the Beavers down there, and we know that the havoc they make with the grain causes 
a serious loss to needy and struggling people.” This advertisement of the abundance of the Beavers in 
Virginia will doubtless result in their rapid numerical decrease, if not speedy total extirpation, through 
excessive persecution, unless the authorities of Virginia should have the wisdom to interpose Jegal pro- 
teetion for the otherwise doomed animals. 
