THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
vou. 1V.| JUNE, 1880. [No. 42. 
THE BEAVER IN NORWAY. 
By AtrreD Heneace Cocks, F.Z.S. 
LirrLe or no accurate information is forthcoming about 
the present distribution of Beavers in Norway. Lilljeborg, in 
‘Sveriges och Norges Diiggdjuren,’ published in 1874, enters at 
some length—about 23 large 8vo pages—into the question, both 
as regards Norway and Sweden, and quotes from Nilsson’s ‘ Skan- 
dinavisk Fauna’ and from the ‘Svenska Jigareforbundets Nya 
Tidskrift,) volumes for 1865, 1867, 1869, 1870, and from an 
article by Mr. Robert Collett in the next volume. Beyond the 
information supplied by these Scandinavian writers, I know of 
no tolerable account of the distribution of the Beaver in ithe 
Scandinavian peninsula. 
Blasius, in his ‘ Siiugethiere Deutschlands,’ published in 1857, 
says, with great recklessness (p. 407), ‘In Lithuania and Poland, 
Norway, Sweden, and North Russia, they are, however, existing 
in great abundance (hdufiger).” Giebel, in ‘Die Siugethiere,’ 
published two years later, says in nearly the same words (p. 619), 
“In Norway and Sweden, Poland and Russia, on the contrary [it 
is found] abundantly” (haujfiger being again the word used). It is 
fair, however, to state that until about twenty-five years ago 
Beayers were apparently much more widely distributed over 
Scandinavia than at present. I was told last autumn that it is 
about twenty-five years since the last Beaver was killed in the 
neighbourhood of the Osterdal, Norway, in the Slem Aa, a tribu- 
tary of the Rena Elv; and Lilljeborg (p. 362) quotes to the same 
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