NOVEMBER 243 



down ? The clue to that must be sought by visualising 

 (shade of Samuel Johnson, forgive thy disciple for 

 allowing that unlawful, but convenient, participle to 

 escape from his pen !) by visualising, I say, the land- 

 surface as it was two or three thousand years ago ; for 

 although beavers survived in Great Britain to much 

 more recent times (their skins were still being ex- 

 ported in the middle of the twelfth century), they 

 must have been killed out in Kent long before they 

 disappeared from Wales and Yorkshire. 1 This flat 

 floor of the glen seems to have been the work of 

 beavers a 'beaver lea' such as is commemorated 

 in the name of Beverley in Yorkshire and the Beverley 

 Brook that flows between Wimbledon Common and 

 Kingston Hill. In the remote past these animals may 

 have thrown a dam across the stream which originally 

 carved this cleft in the chalk, and the peat has 

 accumulated in the still water round their deserted 

 dwellings. Had the surrounding beds been sand, 

 gravel, or alluvial soil, the pond would soon have been 

 silted up ; but chalk streams run clear, allowing ample 

 time for the growth of peat. No doubt there are 

 many features in the landscape of our island owing 

 their character to beavers, the most powerful of rodent 

 animals; but it is seldom that local geology lends 

 itself to preserving a 'beaver lea' so distinctly as in 

 this dell. 



Mr. Radclyffe Dugmore is the author of a most 



1 It is remarkable that, although abundant fossil and semi-fossil 

 remains of the beaver have been found in almost all parts of Great 

 Britain, there ia no evidence, organic or literary, that they ever 

 existed in Ireland. 



