BEAVER 275 



In Livonia, where beavers disappeared at a still earlier date than from 

 Austria-Hungary, they caused several inundations in 1729 by the construc- 

 tion of their dams. In 1841 the last beaver in that country was shot at the 

 source of the Aa. In Scandinavia, where beavers were at one time common, they 

 now exist chiefly owing to preservation. In eastern Europe the beaver was also 

 a familiar animal in former times ; and in the districts of Braslaw and Minsk, 

 many were observed in the smaller rivers so late as 1846, while in 1879 colonies 

 were found on a tributary of the Pripet, so that these rodents may exist there even 

 now. In central Eussia the beaver seems to have been exterminated two hundred 

 years ago. In the north some may survive on the Petchora and the Dwina, 

 although none appear to have been recorded since the year 1842. In the Caucasus 

 the beaver was still to be found in 1860, and a freshly killed skin was seen so 

 recently as 1894. It is probably an inhabitant of Asia Minor even now, and has 

 been found lately near Aleppo ; but in the Altai, where it must have survived into 

 the nineteenth century, many travellers have looked for it in vain ; nor do the 

 records of modern naturalists speak of its existence in eastern Siberia. 



Solitary individuals, however, occasionally make their appearance in various 

 continental localities. In September 1883, in the south of France, five beavers were 

 caught on the banks of the Ehone, and lately several have been seen near the 

 mouth of that river. On the lower Bavarian Alps, near the Sur, a stream flowing 

 into the Salzach, and in the neighbouring Austrian territory, beavers were found 

 near Salzburg in 1867, but in 1870 there remained only a few traces of their 

 habitations. They are said to have died out on the Rhine three hundred years 

 ago, but round the river Mbhne in Westphalia they lingered longer — the last 

 having been driven down the valley through the Ruhr to the Rhine, and killed 

 at the Werthausen ferry on the 2nd October 1877. 



The beaver appears to have been at home on the Elbe for ages. In 1714 

 Prince Leopold of Anhalt made an arrangement with the Landgrave of Hesse- 

 Cassel by which he received a recruit for each beaver supplied, and a hundred 

 years ago the district between the Anhalt boundary and the Saale, and more 

 especially the Prussian forest of Loderitz, formed the principal area of the Elbe 

 beaver. In those days beavers flourished in the forests round Grunewalde, in the 

 large willow- groves on the right shore of the Elbe, and also near the Nuthe River, 

 which discharges into the Elbe. 



When, in 1870, the Elbe Canal from Dornburg to Biederitz near Magdeburg 

 was made, it meant more favourable conditions for the beaver-colonies, inasmuch 

 as the greater part of the then navigable stream was changed into an almost 

 stagnant back-water, extending for about twelve miles, and winding its way between 

 steep banks, covered with willow-groves or leafy forests. The country between 

 the Main and the old Elbe, which had never had a single pair of beavers before, 

 now became a favourite resort for these rodents ; and while in 1875 only twenty 

 beavers are said to have existed between Dessau and Magdeburg, the district was 

 in 1890 inhabited by at least a couple of hundred ; but the number of beavers 

 thus recorded in 1875 did not include the colonies in Anhalt, nor those in the 

 Prussian province of Saxony. A map, dated 1890, of the area inhabited by beavers 

 ■between Wittenberg and Magdeburg, shows that in Anhalt and the Prussian royal 



