THE BEAVER IN NORWAY. 235 
of the river, and left to find its way down to the coast. Natu- 
rally, when a few logs get together, they carry all before them, 
not even sparing so interesting an object as a Beaver’s lodge. 
To this cause was attributed the non-increase of the animals. 
I had intended to go up again in the boat that night, to wait 
out in the hope of seeing something of the Beavers them- 
selves; but the night was so pitch-dark and overcast that it was 
useless to attempt it. The next morning I went up the river 
again by boat, and saw some lodges at some little distance from 
that inspected the previous day, which were inhabited, I was told, 
by two pairs of Beavers. 
There were said to be ten inhabited lodges—i. e., ten pairs of 
Beavers—about seven English miles lower down the river, making 
(if I understood correctly), together with the three pairs whose 
lodges I visited, a total of twenty-six Beavers in this river.* We 
found a birch tree cut down where it was about seven inches in 
diameter, at a height of five feet eight or nine inches from the 
ground. This must have been done, I suppose, when the snow 
lay some little depth. 
Last year while in Norway I heard of a new Beaver “ colony,” 
which had been noticed the previous year (1878) for the first 
time near P , in a small river, the R Bek. On visiting 
the spot, I found that the Beaver or Beavers (it is not known 
which) lived in the river-bank, to which there was access by two 
holes, like magnified water-voles’ holes, close together, just above 
the surface of the water. The bank on that side of the stream 
rose steeply to a height of about twenty feet, and was thickly 
wooded; but it seemed an unlikely place for Beavers to take up 
their abode in, as the stream was only a “beck,” quite narrow, 
and the opposite bank was flat meadow land, forming part of a 
regular farm, the house not being much more than a quarter of 
an English mile distant, and it was altogether quite a tame 
locality. The owner of the farm showed me where the original 
holes had been on the meadow side of the Beek, which he had 
stopped up for fear of his cows breaking through. In one of 
them, he said, he had found a small fish, which he was fully 
* It is, of course, natural to suppose that each—or at least most—of these 
thirteen pairs would have young at the time of my visit; but as I was particularly 
told that the numbers do not increase, but rather the reverse, it would not do to 
allow for them in endeavouring to make out a census, 
