VOL. XXXVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. S'i/ 



cut down trees of between '1 and 3 feet diameter. She was turned into a foun- 

 tain with some live flounders, but never ofl^ered to strike at them, as an otter 

 would have done. When she eat, she always sat on her hind legs, and held 

 the bread in her paws like a squirrel. When she slept, she commonly lay 

 on her belly, with her tail under her. In swimming, she held her fore-feet 

 close up under her throat, and the claws closed, as when one brings the ends 

 of one's thumb and of all the fingers close together, never moving her fore- 

 feet till she came to the side, and endeavoured to get out. She swam with her 

 hind-feet only, which had five toes, and were webbed like those of a goose; 

 the tail, which was scaly, and in form of the blade of an oar, served as a 

 rudder, with which she steered herself, especially when she swam under water, 

 which she would do for 2 or 3 minutes, and then come up to breathe, some- 

 times raising her nostrils only above water: she swam much swifter than any 

 water-fowl, moving under water as swift as a carp. The hind legs being much 

 longer than the fore, made her walk but slowly, or rather waddle like a duck 

 when on dry land; and if driven along fast, she could not run, but went by 

 jumps, flapping her tail against the ground. Her excrements were always 

 black, and very fetid ; her urine turbid and whitish, and very strong scented. 

 She made no noise, except a little kind of grunting, when driven fast and 

 angred. She seemed very brisk, and thrived well with the abovementioned 

 food, being turned into the fountain to bathe 3 or 4 times a week. But the 

 author of the Memoires de I'Histoire des Animaux, above-cited, says, that the 

 male beaver they dissected, had lived several years at Versailles without being 

 permitted to go into the water. Our beaver had one day convulsion fits, very 

 like the epilepsy in men, from which she recovered soon, and was very well 

 after them, till at last she was killed by a dog; when she was so torn, that we 

 could see nothing particular in the heart, or in the lungs. In the abdomen the 

 liver and kidneys were quite torn in pieces. There were several holes bit 

 through the stomach, out of one of which crawled a worm about 6 or 7 inches 

 long, like a common earth-worm, being probably of the same sort as those 

 mentioned before by the author of the Memoires, &c. The bowels in general 

 seemed very much to resemble those of dogs, except the intestinum caecum, 

 which was of that prodigious size as abovementioned. This creature being a 

 female, they found the ovaria and the uterus divided into 2 horns, in the same 

 situation as in bitches: the bladder was contracted about the size of a walnut, 

 very much wrinkled on the outside; it lay exactly over the body of tiie uterus; 

 the meatus urinarius ran upon the vagina above 2 inches in length. Just below 

 the OS pubis, on each side of the vagina, and above the meatus urinarius, sup- 

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