358 AMERICAN BEAVER. 



where its dams formerly existed are on pure running streams, and not 

 on the sluggish rivers near the sea-coast. 



GENERAL REMARKS.- 



It is doubted by some authors whether the American Beaver is identi- 

 cal with the Beaver which exists in the north of Europe ; F. Cuvier, 

 KuHL, and others, described it under the names of C. Americanus, C. 

 Canadensis, &c. From the amphibious habits of this animal, and its 

 northern range on -both continents, strong arguments in favour of the 

 identity of the American and European species, might be maintained, 

 even without adopting the theory of the former connexion of the two ad- 

 jacent continents. We carefully compared many specimens (American 

 and European,) in the museums of Europe, and did not perceive any dif- 

 ference between them, except that the American specimens were a very 

 little larger than the European. We saw a living Beaver in Denmark 

 that had been obtained in the north of Sweden ; in its general appear- 

 ance and actions it did not differ from those we have seen in confine- 

 ment in America. It has been argued, however, that the European ani- 

 mal differs in its habits from the American, and that along the banks of 

 the Weser, the Rhone, and the Danube, the Beavers are not gregarious, 

 and that they burro^v in the banks like the musk-rat. But change of 

 habit may be the result of altered circumstances, and is not in itself suf- 

 ficient to constitute a species. Our Avild pigeon (Columha migratoria,) 

 formerly bred in communities in the Northern States ; we once saw one 

 of their breeding places near Lake Champlain, where there were more 

 than a hundred nests on a single tree. They still breed in that portion 

 of the country, but the persecutions of man have compelled them to 

 adopt a different habit, and two nests are now seldom found on a tree. 



The banlis of the European rivers, (on which the Beaver still remains 

 although scarcely more than a straggler can be found along them now,) 

 have been cultivated to the water's edge, and necessity, not choice, has 

 driven the remnant of the Beaver tribe to the change of habit we 

 have referred to. But if the accounts of travellers in the north of Europe 

 are to be relied on, the habits of the Beaver are in the uncultivated por- 

 tions of that country precisely similar to those exhibited by the animal in 

 Canada. We consider the account of these animals given us by Hearne, 

 (p. 234,) as very accurate. He speaks of their peculiarly constructed 

 huts, their living in communities, and their general habits. In the ac- 

 count of Swedish Lapland, by Professor Leems, published in Danish 

 and Latin, Copenhagen, 1767, we have the following notice of the 

 European species : (we quote from the English translation in Pinker- 



