374 EARLY NOTICES OP THE BEAVER. 



region of the North-west, where still it forms an important object of 

 the chace. To one of these reference has already been made in an 

 extract from the Journal of Mr. David Thompson, where it is seen that 

 the castoreum is succssfully employed as a bait in trapping both the male 

 and female beaver. The other use is as an accompaniment of tobacco. 

 Both the Indians and the Hudson's Bay Company's traders frequently 

 place a small portion of the castoreum in their pipe along with tobacco. 

 The flavour is very peculiar, and the smell of the smoke totally differ- 

 ent from that of the castoreum itself, but by no means unpleasing. 

 No special effects, however, seem to result from its use in this manner, 

 so diverse from any of the ancient or modern European modes of pre- 

 scription. That the beaver was at one time indigenous to the British 

 Islands is well known. Its remains have been discovered under circum- 

 stances indicative of an antiquity coeval with the extinct mammoth 

 {Elephas prhniffenius.)* But their most frequent situation is at the 

 bottom of the peat-bog; as in the Newbury peat- valley, where they were 

 found twenty feet below the present surface, associated with the remains 

 of the wild-boar, roebuck, goat, deer, and wolf. The Castor Europceus 

 accordingly occupies an interesting place among the extinct animals 

 referrible to the primeval transition of the British Archaeologist, as it 

 is proved to have e-rlsted as a living species, both in Scotland and Wales, 

 down to the twelfth century, and as we shall see is referred to so 

 late as the fifteenth century. t In 1788, Dr. William Farquharson 

 presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, the skeleton of the 

 head, and one of the haunch bones of a beaver, dug up in Martie's 

 Loch of Kinloch, near Coupar Angus, Perthshire. The bones are 

 dyed of a deep brown color, derived from the peaty marie in which 

 they were found embedded; and the cranium is imperfect. But the 

 remains of the remarkable incisors so characteristic of the beaver, still 

 exist in the lower jaw bone. This interesting paleeootological relic I 

 recalled to mind with lively interest when exploring a deserted beaver- 

 dam on the Eagle River, Lake Superior, in 1855, and all the more from 

 the recollections of a conversation with Hugh Miller, on the primeval 

 archaeological era of Scotland, to which it gave rise, when accompanying 

 that distinguished geologist on one occasion over the Museum of the 

 Scottish Antiquaries. From the nature of his speculations concerning 

 the ancient life of the New Red Sandstone, the fossil beaver spoke to 



* Owen's British Fossil Mammals, p. 191. 

 t Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, pp. 84, 193. 



