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, during 

 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 



