EARLY NOTICES OF THE BEAVER. 385 



Then builded he his fort for strong and several fights ; 

 His passages contriv'd with such unusual sleights, 

 That from the hunter oft he issu'd undiscern'd, 

 As if men ftom this beast to fortify had learned j 

 Whose kind, in her decay'd, is to this isle unknown, 

 Thus Tivy boasts this beast peculiarly her own. " 



So also Browne, in the fourth song of his " Brittannia's Pastorals," 

 representing the consolation of the bereaved Pan, in the memorial tree 

 that sprung 



" Out of the maiden's bed of endless rest," 



introduces Tivy's beavers, as familiar objects of dread to the guardian 

 of the sylvan shades : 



" The many-kernel-bearing pyne of late, 

 Prom all trees else, to me was consecrate ; 

 But now behold a roote worth more my love. 

 Equal to that which, in an obscure grove, 

 Infernal Juno proper takes to her. 



This must I succour, this must I defend. 

 And from the wild boar's rooting ever shend ; 

 Here shall the wood-pecker no entrance finde, 

 Nor Tivy's bevers gnaw the clothing rinde." 



By means of such passages from the elder British poets, we trace 

 the memory of the native beaver, and the popular traditions associated 

 with it, down to a period when the study of the strange habits of this 

 remarkable animal was revived amid its populous haunts in the New 

 "World. Then the marvels of the hunter and the traveller effaced the 

 memory of older home traditions, and to this source we may trace the 

 flattering comparison instituted by Gibbon, in the forty-second chapter 

 of his " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," between the settled, 

 domestic beaver, and the nomad Tartar hordes of Asia : " They were 

 bold and dexterous archers, who drank the milk, and feasted on the 

 flesh of their fleet and indefatigable horses. Their huts were hastily 

 built of rough timber, and we may not without flattery compare them 

 to the architecture of the beaver, which they resembled in a double 

 issue to the land and water for the escape of the savage inhabitant : an 

 animal less cleanly, less diligent, less social, than that marvellous quad- 

 ruped." 



The hunting of the beaver, appears to have been anciently a favourite 

 sport on the continent, if not in England ; though the zeal with which 

 the otter is still pursued in Scotland may suggest the older beaver 

 huntas not improbably one of the ancient sports of that couutry. The 



