278 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
general terms that the animal was still common there, but gave 
no particulars. Bowden in his ‘ Naturalist in Norway,’ 1869 
(p. 73), says:—‘‘ The Beaver was formerly very common in 
Norway, and was principally found in Soloer, Osterdalen, 
Gudbrundsdalen, and Jemteland; there is still a ‘ Boever-dalm’ 
and a ‘ Boever-elv’ in Osterdalen.” He adds, ‘‘ It is now only to 
be met with on the estate of a Mr. Aall, a gentleman who 
resides near Arendal, in the south of Norway.” 
Mr. Cocks was informed that in the neighbourhood of Osterdal, 
in the Slem Aa, a tributary of the Rena Ely, the last Beaver was 
killed about 1855; but he ascertained the existence in 1880 of 
at least three colonies in other parts of the country, and of these 
he has given an interesting account in ‘The Zoologist’ for 1880 
(p. 288), suppressing only the names of the exact localities, for 
the better protection of the colonists. Some further particulars 
on this subject, gleaned during a second visit to Norway, are given 
in a subsequent article in the same volume (p. 497), and Mr. 
Cocks sums up (p. 501) by expressing his opinion that in 1880 
there were probably not sixty adult Beavers in the whole of 
Norway.* When in Christiania, in October, 1884, he saw an 
adult male Beaver, in the flesh, which had just been shot at the 
principal colony in the South of Norway; it measured 8 ft. 4 in. ; 
tail, 10 in.; and weighed 39 Ibs. 10 ozs. 
In Sweden he had only heard of two districts where it was 
possible that Beavers might still exist, but on visiting these in 
the autumn of 1881 he could not learn that any had been heard 
of for about thirty years (Zool. 1882, p. 15). 
Very few remains of this animal are to be found in the 
Museums of Scandinavia. At Trondhjem, for example, there are 
only three or four broken pieces of jaw, and the skin of a tail; 
at Stockholm there are three stuffed specimens from Sweden and 
Germany, and at the Goteborg Museum there is no Huropean 
specimen to be found. 
In the tomb of an ancient Lapp, opened about thirty years 
ago at Mortensnes, on the Varangerfjord, in the extreme north- 
* Prof. Collett, of Christiania, in an article on the Beaver in Norway, 
published in the ‘Nyt Magazin for Naturvidenskaberne’ (1883, Bd. 18, 
Hefte 1), estimated the number of Beavers in Norway at that time to be 
about a hundred, and he did not consider that they were decreasing It is 
satisfactory to learn that they are now being protected by law from destruction. 
pa 
