AN OTTER SWISUJEIQ BV MOOSLIGHT, 



CHAPTER VI 



Lakes and Streams 



Beaver. 



Comparatively few <>t' the mammals of central Europe are entitled 

 to be called denizens of the water or its vicinity; but the claim of 

 the beaver {Castor fiber) to be so designated is beyond question. Formerly 

 distributed over the greater part of Europe and northern Asia, and repre- 

 sented by an allied species or race in North America, this rodent has been 

 exterminated from most of its haunts: and the epoch when it inhabited the 

 countries of Europe from the highest north to the Mediterranean, and from the 

 extreme west as far as the Ural River and beyond, has long since passed away. 

 As a wild species it is unknown in the British Isles, where it was formerly widely 

 spread, although beavers have been acclimatised in the island of Bute, where they 

 were introduced in 1874. Some centuries ago beavers are reported to have been 

 still abundant in Switzerland, and in the environs of St. Gall they were well known 

 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but since then they have disappeared. 

 In Bohemia, where they had been exterminated in the sixteenth century, they 

 were reintroduced from Poland in 1773, and after flourishing for a time were 

 gradually killed oft* by poachers, the last one dying in 1883. Elsewhere in the 

 Austrian empire no beavers are now to be found except in the lower Danube, 

 where they are preserved by the Emperor. In Bosnia and Herzegovina where, 

 as elsewhere, the names of places indicate the former presence of beavers, and 

 buried skeletons confirm the evidence, the species is now totally unknown. 



