194 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



declared a protected reserve. As a result of persecution the species 

 has lost the habit of constructing dams and lives in burrows in the 

 banks of the streams. (Didier and Rode, 1935, pp. 192-193.) 



Trouessart wrote in 1884 (pp. 119-121) that its northern limit 

 in the Rhone Basin was approximately Valence (as it is now). He 

 added that it was becoming rarer each year, owing to relentless per- 

 secution. Also that its flesh is excellent, and since it is hunted for 

 its hide and for its castor, as well as because of its depredations in 

 young plantations, its early exterminaton in France could be pre- 

 dicted. But such a fate has been happily warded off. 



A few years ago its castor was worth more than 250 francs a 

 pound. For a long time the Syndicat des digues du Rhone paid a 

 bounty of 15 francs on Beavers, on account of the alleged damage 

 to dikes. But with better information the bounty was abandoned. 

 (Martin, 1910, p. lOb.) 



Italy. Gesner (1551, vol. 1, p. 337) mentions the Beaver as 

 occurring at the mouth of the Po. 



Yugoslavia. The species is entirely exterminated, the last speci- 

 mens having been observed in 1859 at Syrmia on the Danube and 

 at about the same time in Bosnia on the River Ukrina. A good 

 many fossil remains have been found in Croatia and Slovenia. (M. 

 Hirtz, in Hit., December, 1936.) 



Rumania. The species existed in Transylvania up to about 1500, 

 and in Moldavia to 1823 (Calinescu, 1931, p. 82). 



Hungary. Extermination took place in the first half of the nine- 

 teenth century (J. Schenk, in litt., November, 1936). 



Austria. In 1867 Beavers still lived northwest of Salzburg, where 

 the Sur discharges into the Salzach, but by 1870 only disused 

 burrows could be found. There was formerly a protected colony 

 in the plains of the Danube near Wien. But now the Beaver is no 

 more to be found in the Danube region. In 1861 the castor fetched 

 600 Gulden in Salzburg. (Kruger, 1931, pp. 52-54.) 



Czechoslovakia. Under the protection of the Princes of Schwarz- 

 enberg, Beavers survived long in the tributaries of the Moldau, but 

 the last of them died in 1883 (Kruger, 1931, p. 53). 



Switzerland. Gesner (1551, vol. 1, p. 337) reports the Beaver 

 as a very common animal in the large rivers. But it could not sur- 

 vive strong persecution (Kruger, 1931, p. 52). Millais (1905, p. 160) 

 quotes Harting to the effect that "Beavers were to be found in the 

 Aar, the Linnet, and the Reuss, and up to the last century [eight- 

 eenth] a few still lingered on the banks of the last-named stream, 

 on the Thiele, and the Byrse." 



Germany. On the Rhine the animals died out more than 300 

 years ago. In Westphalia they occurred up to the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, and the very last was killed apparently in 1877. 



