80 Dr. Wilson's Notes on the 



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 Planorhis 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 depo- 

 sited, 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 material, there remained amorphous, ferruginous- 

 like masses, and, abundantly interspersed with these, the 

 silicious coverings of the animalcules, if they be really animal 

 organisms. Among them I distinguished Epithemia Argus, 

 soreXy turgida, and longicornis ; Cyclotella operculata; 

 Qomphonema constrictum ; Nitzschia sigmoidea ; Surirella 

 craticula ; Cymbella helvetica ; Navicula lanceolata ; and 

 probably most abundant of all, Himantidium arcus. The 

 remains of the mammals found in contact with the peat, in- 

 cluding 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 archaeological 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, though scarcely before, we 

 must be prepared to allow a wide range. 



To these proofs of the prior existence of the beaver in Scot- 

 land, derived from the actual discovery of its remains, it is easy 

 to add others of a similar description from various countries, 

 in which it has evidently also been once indigenous, but in 

 which it has alike ceased to exist. An early instance, in Eng- 

 land, is that in 1757, by Dr. Collet,* who mentions the heads 

 of beavers as having been found, along with bones of other 

 animals, in a peat-pit near Newbury, in Berkshire. Similar 

 discoveries of remains, as quoted by Professor Owen,t have 



* Philosophical Transactions for 1757, p. 112. 



t History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds, pp. 184, 190. 



