BEAVERS AND THEIR WAYS. 275 
showed him a recent skin of a Beaver from the Rhone, which, 
notwithstanding the zeal of his correspondents, he had been two 
years trying to procure. 
In Spain, according to some of the old writers, the Beaver 
was at one time to be found; but I have been unable to collect 
any details of its former distribution in that country, nor to 
discover at what period it became extinct there. 
In Grrmuany, at the close of the last century, many localities 
are reported to have been frequented by Beavers; for example in 
Mark, especially in the Altmark and Preignitz, and in the 
Middle Mark; also in the rivers Spree and Havel, in the vicinities 
of Berlin, Potsdam, Oranienberg, Liebenwalde, Trebbin, Nauen, 
and Kénigshorst. 
Bechstein, writing in 1801, tells us that on the Elbe, near 
Kiihnert, the property of the Prussian minister Schulenberg, 
there were then many Beavers, which constructed dams on the 
side channels or arms of the river where there was calm water. 
Near Wittenberg also they lived in societies and formed dams. 
In the vicinity of Kettinghausen, on the Lippe, they built their 
dams, and were found in some numbers, as well as higher up 
the river in the territory of Paderborn. In these localities their 
habitations are stated to have been so skilful as to rival those of 
Canada, though the colonies were less numerous. The trees 
they cut down were willows and poplars. 
Oken mentions a Beaver-hut on the Yesil, in the duchy of 
Cleves, which stood six feet high, with two chambers, one above 
the other, the upper having three and the under one four cells ; 
and he refers to a paper by Meyerinck in the Berlin Nat. Hist. 
Transactions for 1829,* describing a colony, settled for upwards 
of a century on the little River Nuthe, half a league above its 
confluence with the Elbe in a sequestered canton of the district 
of Magdeburg. In 1822 it contained from fifteen to twenty 
individuals: they had burrows, built huts eight or ten feet high, 
using trunks and branches of trees along with earth, and con- 
structed a dyke. 
Martius, writing in 1837, speaks of colonies on the Amper, 
which were still tended as objects of forestry or huntsman’s craft. 
* Verhandl. Gesselsch. Naturf. Freunde zu Berlin, 1829, Bd. I., pp. 325 
— 332, 
