EARLY NOflCES OP THE BEAVER. 377 



and closet to the loch, perched above its southern margin, we have the little pos- 

 session of Wideopen, the inheritance of the poet Thomson, who is said to have 

 gathered here, among the storms of the hills, many of the materials for the 

 admirable descriptions in his poem of Winter. Through the adjoining tract of the 

 Cheviots, spreads that range of which it could be said, as in the ballad of the 

 Battle of Otterbourne: 



The deer ritas wild on hill and dale, 

 The birds fly Wild frae tree to tree. 



Few places, therefore, could be more appropriate for the discovery of any remains 

 which were to aid in giving body to our traditions, as in forming a link between 

 remote and existing states of civilization. 



The moss, which constitutes the body of the Linton morass, is variable in depth, 

 and covers a very extensive deposit of marl, to obtain which, for agricultural pur- 

 poses, operations on a considerable scale were undertaken by the tenant, Mr. 

 Purves, by whom the relic of the interesting animal, found in the course of these 

 Va 8 placed in my hands, and to whose intelligent observation I am chiefly indebted 

 for the particulars of its discovery. In digging about twenty yards from the mar- 

 gin, and after penetrating a thickness of moss of about eight feet, the marl was 

 reached, and upon its surface was found a skull in excellent preservation,* easily 

 tecognised by mOj on examining it, as that of a beaver. Either no other parts of 

 the skeleton had remained preserved in its contiguity, or they had failed to attract 

 the attention of the workmen ; the probability being, that from the slighter texture 

 of most of the other bones, they had been less able to resist entire disintegration, 

 or had crumbled on exposure. The remains of deer and other animals were also 

 discovered on the surface of the marl, at about the same distance from the margin ; 

 but at other places, the horns and bones of deer, and among these a lower maxilla, 

 were found fourteen feet beneath the mai'l itself, yet still within. its layers, or at 

 about an aggregate depth of twenty-two feet. A^mong the remains preserved and 

 placed before me were horns of the red deer, with metatarsal bones, evidently 

 also of animals of the deer species, all betokening individuals of once stately 

 dimensions; while the left tibia of an ox, doubtless the JBos pri7nigenius, -which wa,3 

 ■found imbedded at a depth of seven feet within the marl, I computed must have 

 belonged to an animal measuring at least six feet, or with the hoof and soft parts 

 entire, fully half a foot more to the summit of the shoulder. The moss, at the part 

 covering these remains, might be viewed as divided into three layers. The upper 

 of these, approaching to about three feet in thickness, consisted of the traces of 

 •comparatively fresh vegetation; the second layer, measuring about two feet, had a 

 less firm consistence, and changed its colour of a greenish brown, when moist and 

 newly exposed, to almost a white when dry: the third layer extended to about 

 four feet, but in some places to a much greater thickness, and was almost black, 

 holding imbedded, in various grades of preservation, many and not mean remains 

 of the primeval forests, such as trunks of trees, for the most part hazel and birch, 

 Nvith an intermingling of oak, some measuring from two to even four feet in 



* The skull is now placed lu the Museum of the Tvreedside Physical and Antiquarian 

 Society at Kelso. 



