ANCIENT AND EXTINCT BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. 145 
was a native of Ireland in the days of the Mammoth and Reindeer, 
with remains of which it has been found in the lately excavated 
eave of Shandon. The extinction of this animal appears to 
have taken place long before any record of its existence was 
made. Some idea of the numbers of this ancient British Horse 
may be gathered from the fact that its remains have been 
recognized in no Jess than fifty different situations in England 
alone, and in northern, central, and southern Ireland; whilst, 
strange to say, it has not been identified in any deposits north of 
the Tweed. In fact, the Mammoth and Reindeer appear to have 
been the only large mammals which at that time frequented Scot- 
land, where the climate was doubtless inimical to the habits and 
requirements of other species. 
THE BEAVER was not uncommon in the rivers of Wales towards 
the close of the twelfth century, according to the Welsh author 
Giraldus Cambrensis. It was also, according to historians, a native 
of Scotland and England in the fifteenth ceutury ; but Giraldus 
asserts that it was not found in his time in Ireland, where up to the 
present day not a trace of its existence has been discovered. The 
bones of Beaver, Hare, Red Deer, Roebuck, Ox, Brown Bear, Wolf, 
and Boar have been dug up in peat-bogs; moreover, it lingered on 
to historical times, and was finally extirpated by man. A few are 
still to be found in the more remote and sequestered river- 
tributaries of Central and Eastern Europe,* and the species still 
flourishes in Canada, in spite of trappers and the Hudson’s Bay 
Company. 
Along with this Beaver there lived in pre-glacial times a gigantic 
species to which the name of Cuvier’s gigantic Beaver has been 
given. ‘This species, however, did not survive the glacial period, 
and ought not properly to be included with the quadrupeds now 
under consideration. The connection, however, between the two 
shows that the smaller and more recent species survived the intense 
* In Lord Clermont’s ‘Guide to the Quadrupeds of Europe’ (1859), it is stated 
(p. 83) that the Beaver, though in greatly reduced numbers, is still found in several 
rivers of the northern and central countries of Europe, such as the Danube, Rhine 
and Rhone, on which last it is recorded by Crespon as occurring from Pont St. Esprit 
to the sea, especially among willow plantations, on which it sometimes inflicts 
serious injury. It is rare in Russia, except on the Dwina and Petchora, but 
according to Pallas, is numerous in Siberia, Tartary and the Caucasus. As regards 
Siberia, see the first of the “ Occasional Notes” in the present number.—Ep. 
U 
