376 EARLY NOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 



of the statistical account of the Parish of Edrom,* states that several 

 other heads of the beaver were recovered from the same deposit. 

 Here therefore, it is not presuming too much to assume was the marie 

 deposited from the lake where in ancient centuries a colony of Scottish 

 beavers had constructed their habitations ; while the accumulated vege- 

 table moss with its enclosed relics of the ancient forest, might help us 

 to some guess as to the probable era of their extinction : not necessarily 

 one prior to that of man, for the rude monoxylous British canoe, hoi 

 lowed by fire out of a single tree, like those in use by the Indians on 

 the Columbia River, has been found at as great a depth in more than 

 one of the Scottish mosses. f 



But the traces of the former existence of the beaver in Scotland 

 have received additional illustration from the researches of Dr. Charles 

 Wilson, in the paper already referred to, in the Edinburgh Philosophi- 

 cal Journal. In this the author thus describes a third instance of the 

 discovery of the remains of the beaver in Scotland, with the traditional 

 associations of the locality where it was found : — 



" On the verge of the parish of Linton, in Roxburghshire, there is a remnant of 

 what has evidently once been a far more extensive loch, which had skirted for 

 some distance the outer range of the Cheviot Hills, but Tvhich, from some altera- 

 tion of the levels, has now, for the most part, gradually drained itself off to the 

 westward. Into this loch had flowed the waters of the Cheviots, entering it, as 

 the little river Kail, by a narrow gorge towards the eastern extremity : an i it is 

 doubtless through the agency of this often impetuous current, that those altera- 

 tions have chiefly been effected which have diverted the stream from what is now 

 the narrow limits of Linton Loch; and left it contracted to a few stagnant pools, 

 imbedded in a deep but not extensive morass, from which, however, still flows a 

 considerable body of water by an artificially constructed channel. The near vicin- 

 ity of the loch presents many localities of interest, as well in legendary lore as 

 from later associations. The hollow at Wormington, still known as the 'worm's 

 hole,' marks, according to familiar story, the ancient haunt of a monstrous 

 serpent or dragon, the destruction of which, by William de Somerville, obtained 

 for him the gift of the surrounding barony from "William the Lion. The little 

 knoll, consisting wholly of fine sand, on which the church of Linton is built, has 

 seemed to the peasant to justify the tradition, that its elevation was the work of 

 two sisters, who sifted the heap as a voluntary penance, to expiate in a brother 

 the crime of murder. The traces of the foundations of the neighbouring fortalice, 

 still lurking under their covering of green sward, recal the memory of more than 

 one of the scarcely less stirring, while more authentic scenes of border warfare; 



* New Statistical Account ; Berwick, p. 267. 

 t Prehistoric Anuals of Scotland, p. 31. 



