The Zoologist — Januarv, 1870. , 1965 



and was miserabl}' thin ; but, singularly enough, he had about the 

 finest fur I ever saw. He was an aged animal. 1 1 is rare to see a 

 beaver which has been trapped with its teeth whole, as they are often 

 broken in trying to get out of the trap. A full-grown beaver weighs 

 about thirty-four pounds. I am not an anatomist; but still I do not 

 thinlv there is anything very peculiar about its internal structure,* 

 except that the heart weighs a mere nothing — the cavities being so 

 very large. An old beaver when shot sinks, a kitten floats. A good 

 skin will weigh two and a half pounds; but it is very rarely that 

 one weighing that amount is caught in Vancouver Island. The Hud- 

 son's Bay Company give only from seventy-five to eighty-five cents 

 per pound at Victoria for peltries, so that a trapper now-a-days 

 cannot get very fat at the work. There are at present very ^qw beavers 

 on either Vancouver Island or the mainland, compared with what 

 there must have been some years ago; but they have been increasing 

 for the last six years ; and no doubt by the time beaver-skins come 

 into fashion again there will be a plentiful supply. 



Supplementary Notes by Mr. Brown. 



The following I add as an Appendix to the foregoing observations 

 of my friend Mr. Green, whose opportunities for studying the animal 

 were much superior to my own during my travels in North-west 

 America, and whose account is valuable as being the plain un- 

 varnished notes of a hunter — a narration of facts very familiar to him, 

 written with no reference to preconceived notions or received theories. 

 First, therefore, regarding the range of the beaver. It is found all 

 over British Columbia, Oregon, Washington Territorj', and even south 

 to California and north to the limit of trees. It is not, however, 

 found, as far as I can learn, in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but is 

 abundant in Vancouver Island, though, curiously enough (in such a 

 manner is history written) Colonel Colquhoun Grant, in his 'Descrip- 

 tion of Vancouver Island' (Journal of the Royal Geographical 

 Society, vol. xxvii. p. 268), mentions that he has seen traces, and was 

 not aware that the animal itself had been found. The fact of the 

 matter is, he could have found abundance not far from his own door. 

 Near Victoria, in Mr. Yales's Swamp, and in one near Dr. Tolmie's, 

 are several beavers; and on the road to Cadborough Bay there are, 

 in a small stream near where the road crosses, the remains of an old 



* Vide Cleland, Edin. New Phil. Journal, new series, vol. xiii. (1860) pp. H — 20. 



