276 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Wagner, writing in 1846, mentions the Beaver as occurring 
not only on the Danube, but on the Amper, Isar, Iller, and 
Salzach, tributaries of that river, as well as in the Elbe and 
Oder ; while in other rivers it had then only recently disappeared. 
Only forty years ago it was to be met with on the Amper, 
a Bavarian stream, a tributary of the Isar, and on the Moldau, 
a river of Bohemia, which falls into the Elbe. In the former 
they sometimes descended to the junction, and in the latter they 
were found chiefly in the great forest of Wittingau, belonging to 
Prince Schwartzenberg, who strictly preserved them,* though 
occasionally, but very rarely, its tracks were to be seen on the 
sands of the low islands near Prague. 
The Brothers Stuart, writing in 1848, thus refer to the 
Beavers of the Moldaut :—‘‘ The varieties of wood and lake game 
in the moorland forests of Wittingau unite a diversity of sport 
rarely combined in the same range; but the most interesting of 
their productions are the Beavers, which are to be found in no 
‘other part of the Austrian states, and here breed principally on 
the Neulach, the Miser, and the Luschnitz, tributaries of the 
Moldau; they live in single families far removed from each 
other, as the stronger always expel the weaker from their neigh- 
bourhood. They are now (1848) strictly preserved, but as the 
streams which they inhabit are march waters (i. e., boundaries), 
their numbers are continually diminished by the people of the 
neighbouring seignories..... . The Moldau Beavers subsist 
on the bark of trees, preferring the aspen and willow, but eating 
also that of oaks and fruit trees.” 
In North-Western Germany, Beavers existed formerly in the 
Moselle and the Maas. Blasius asserts that a Beaver was 
captured in Brunswick, in the Schunter, at the end of the last 
century; that fifty years later they were observed on the Lippe 
in Westphalia; and that when he wrote (in 1857) they were still 
to be found on the Elbe between Madgeburg and Wittenburg, 
though the colonies since 1848 had become greatly reduced. He 
adds that they had been then lately observed on the Havel and 
Oder, in the Altmark. 
A correspondent of the ‘Cologne Gazette,’ writing from 
* Liebich, -Compendium der Jagdkunde.’ 8vo. Wien, 1855. 
} ‘Lays of the Deer Forest,’ vol. 11. p. 216; and Append., p. 447. 
