82 Dr. Wilson's Notes on the 



not presented to us in any marked abundance, neither are 

 they wholly wanting, or devoid of curiosity and interest. We 

 have no earlier, and can scarcely have any more authentic, 

 notices of this description than such as are derivable from the 

 names of places, which our ancestors often rendered com- 

 memorative of some leading feature or specialty of the site. 

 Thus, in the nomenclature of the Anglo-Saxons, as exhibited 

 in the " Codex Diplomaticus ^vi Saxonici," we find the 

 names, Beferburne, Beferige, Beferic, and Beferluc.^ In 

 the Glossary of ^Ifric, the Anglo-Saxon Archbishop of 

 Canterbury near the close of the tenth century, appended to 

 his " Grammatica Latino-Saxonica," we have the Befer 

 rendered as the Fiber or Castor Ponticus. The annex in 

 each name: btcrne (brook), ige and ic, or icg (island), and 

 luc (inclosed space, fence), is entirely apposite, and suggests 

 to us so perfectly the ordinary habitat of the animal, or the 

 construction of its dam, as to establish at once the certainty 

 of its having existed at the individual place in the Anglo- 

 Saxon period. Again, in an ordinance of Edward I. for the 

 government of Scotland, dated in 1305, we find William of 

 Bevercotes named as chancellor of the kingdom ; and here 

 we are reminded of the huts (Anglo-Saxon cote), of the 

 beaver, a cluster of which had evidently led to the territorial 

 designation of this dignitary. There is a " Bevere Island," 

 which lies about three miles north of the city of Worcester, 

 which is popularly understood to have been so denominated 

 from its having been fieqiiented by beavers :t and doubtless 

 it might be easy to glean elsewhere many similar local 

 designations. Leland, for example, writing prior to the 

 middle of the sixteenth century, mentions the town of Bever- 

 ley, in Yorkshire, as having for its insignia, on its public seal, 

 the animal " quod vocatur Bever ;" and, in a subsequent 

 passage, on what purports to be the authority of an uncertain 

 writer of a life of St. John of Beverley, he introduces the name 

 of the place as, " Deirewald, locus nemorosus, id est, sylva 

 Deirorum, postea Beverlac, quasi locus, vel lacus castorum, 

 dictus a castoribus quibus Hulla aqua vicina abundabat."J 

 While we give due weight to this, as advanced unquestioningly 

 by one of Leland's habits of investigation, writing at his time, 

 yet while citing one of an age far anterior, it appears evident, 

 nevertheless, that not only was the beaver then utterly 

 extinct in the country, but that, at no long period after the 



* Leo, Local Nomenclature of the Anglo-Saxons, p. 14. 



t Allies, Antiquities of Worcestershire, pp. 151, 152. 



+ Leland, Collectanea de rebus Britannicis, torn, iv., pp. 34, 100. 



