378 EARLY NOTICES OP THE BEAVER. 



diameter ; and, along with these, large quantities of hazel nuts, heaped into masses, 

 as if gathered and swept from the upper woodlands by the mountain freshets. la 

 some places gravel was found deposited above the moss, bearing testimony to the 

 action of similar currents. 



The stratum of marl varied from two, to almost eighteen feet in thickness, and 

 consisted of the usual fresh-water shells, but mainly of Planorbis and Limncea ; 

 the greater part being of almost microscopic dimensions, yet often in the most 

 entire preservation. Where the relic of the beaver had been deposited, the marl, 

 however, to judge from portions taken from within the skull, seems to have been 

 largely, if not entirely composed of infusoria. On the application of an acid, after 

 a smart effervescence, with the disappearance of a considerable bulk of the mate- 

 rial, there remained amorphous, ferruginous-like masses, and abundantly inter- 

 spersed with these, the silieious coverings of the animalcules, if they be really 

 animal organisms. Among them I distinguished Epithemia Argus^ sorex, turgida, 

 and longicornis ; Cyclotella operculata ; Oomphonema constrictum ; Nitzschia 

 sigmoidea ; Surirella craticula ; Oymbella helvetica; Navicula lanceolata ; and, 

 probably most abundant of all, Himantidium arcus. The remains of the mammals 

 found in contact with the peat, including the skull of the beaver itself, were of the 

 usual dark tint acquired from that substance : those deposited in the marl preserved 

 more nearly their natural colour. Near the margin of the loch, and about seven 

 feet deep in the moss, were found an arrow-head, and two or three iron horse- 

 shoes; the latter of small dimensions. Could we regard these horse-shoes, and 

 this individual beaver, thus found at nearly the same depth in the moss, as having, 

 reached their position there coetaneously, as, perhaps, approximatively we may, 

 the furthest limit to which our archseological experience would entitle us to go 

 back for this would probably be the Anglo-Saxon period ; but our surmise as to 

 the era would still be a rude one, and within it, or even possibly long after it 

 thouo'h scarcely befor.e, we must be prepared to allow a wide range." 



Corresponding evidence derived from a variety of sources, in like 

 manner prove the ancient presence of the beaver in the Cambridge and 

 Norfolk fens, and where the peat mosses of Berkshire and other 

 English localities have accumulated for ages. 



" Other discoveries, at Mundesley, Bacton, Southwold, and Happisburg in 

 Norfolk, and at Thorpe in Suffolk, appear under relations which seem to carry the 

 antiquity of the beaver in England farther back into the tertiary period, and ought 

 probably to be referred to a different, yet closely allied species. In Denmark, we 

 learn from a highly interesting communication by Professor Steenstrup,* that a 

 lower jaw, with the greater part of the extremities of a beaver, evidently belong- 

 ing to an individual animal, were discovered in the moss of Ohristiansholm ; and 

 that a tooth has also been found in Fyen, all the other traces hitherto of its former 

 existence within the Danish territories having been limited to Sjjelland. Speci- 

 mens of stems, evidently gnawed by the beaver's teeth, were taken from Mariendals 



* Oversigt over det Kgl, danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Forhandlinger, 1856, p. 381. 



