- BEAVERS AND THEIR WAYS. 277 
Wittenberg in February, 1878, remarked that the Beaver, which 
had become so scarce in Germany, had again taken up its abode 
near the village of Wittenberg, and that four pairs had been then 
recently counted in an old channel of the river. Below the 
village, towards the Anhalt frontier, several Beaver dams had 
been discovered, but the animals themselves, though betraying 
their presence by cutting down willows and other trees, were 
seldom seen out of the water. The fishing on this stream 
belonging to the Crown, strict injunctions were given to the 
inspectors not to molest the Beavers, which were accordingly 
well protected. It would be interesting to know whether they 
are still there. 
In Swirzernanp, in the 16th century, Beavers were to be 
found in the Aar, the Limmat, and the Reuss, and up to the last 
century a few still lingered on the banks of the last-named 
stream, on the Thiele, and the Byrse.* 
According to Sir John Lubbock, a few survived until the 
beginning of the present century in Lucerne and Valais. + 
In Lartanp some of the last Beavers were killed by persons 
spearing fish at night with torches. The late Mr. John Wolley 
took great pains, during his sojourn in that country some five- 
and-twenty years ago, to ascertain particulars of its history, 
and he obtained from an old man the skull of the very last 
Beaver known to have been killed within the Arctic Circle some 
twenty-five years previously (about 1835), and which had been 
preserved as a curiosity in his cottage. This specimen is now 
in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.t 
As regards Norway and Swepen, little or no accurate in- 
formation concerning the present distribution of the Beaver in 
that country was forthcoming until Mr. A. H. Cocks, in 1880, 
detailed the result of his search for it there. Lilljeborg,§ 
Nilsson, |) Blasius,{! and Giebel,** had stated vaguely and in 
* Troyon, ‘ Habitations Lacustres,’ and von Tschudi, ‘Das Thierleben der 
Alpenwelt.’ 
+ Lubbock, ‘ Prehistoric Times,’ 2nd ed., p- 200. 
{ Newton, ‘On the Zoology of Ancient Europe,’ p. 25. 
§ ‘ Sveriges och Norges Diiggdjuren,’ 1874, pp. 846—382. 
|| ‘ Seandinavisk Fauna’ (Daggdjuren), i. pp. 409—427, 
| ‘ Séiugethiere Deutschlands,’ 1857, p. 407. 
*< «Die Siiugethiere,’ 1852, p. 69. 
