Reference is made to the beaver in ancient 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics, and Herodotus makes 

 repeated mention of it. Pliny also gives a brief 

 account of this animal. In Germany, in 1103, 

 the right of hunting beaver was conferred along 

 with other special hunting privileges; and a bull 

 of Pope Lucius III, in 1 182, gave to a monastery 

 all the beaver found within the bounds of its 

 property. A royal edict issued at Berlin in March, 

 1725, insisted upon the protection of beaver. 



Before the white man came, beaver Castor 

 canadensis were widely distributed over North 

 America, perhaps more widely than any other 

 animal. The beaver population was large, and 

 probably was densest to the southwest of Hudson 

 Bay and around the headwaters of the Missouri 

 and Columbia rivers. Their scantiest population 

 areas in the United States appear to have been 

 southern Florida and the lower Mississippi Val- 

 ley. This scantiness is attributed by early ex- 

 plorers to the aggressiveness of the alligators. 

 All the southern half of Mexico appears to have 

 been without a beaver population ; but elsewhere 

 over North America, wherever there were decid- 



