38 THE BEAVER AND SCOTTISH TRADITION 



gold when made into a bag a Chimera.' Now 

 here, at last, we seem to have an undoubted 

 traditionary recollection of the beaver, ex- 

 tending down to quite recent times ; for the 

 ' healing of all diseases ' points surely to the 

 mediaeval belief in the medicinal virtues and 

 great value of the castoreum, and the skin 

 itself in ancient days commanded a very high 

 price ; yet the tradition was already so dim that 

 it had no significance for M'Alpine, who dis- 

 misses it as a ' chimera.' To the most intelligent 

 and well-informed Gaelic-speaking Highlanders 

 of to-day the words Dobhar-chu or Dobhran-los- 

 leathann appear to have but the vaguest or no 

 significance ; at most one will be told ' a kind of 

 otter.' Such is the experience at least of those 

 who have kindly undertaken to assist in inves- 

 tigating the matter recently. One cannot but 

 infer that the existence of the beaver in Scot- 

 land 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. 



In 1875 an interesting attempt was made by 

 the then Marquis of Bute to establish a beaver- 

 colony in that island. A suitable piece of 



