1 8 CASTOROLOGIA. 



Nanahbozho went one morning to Lake Superior for the purpose of 

 catching a beaver for his breakfast. He succeeded in dislodging a 

 young beaver and chased it towards the Sault Ste. Marie ; a stone, 

 thirty feet in diameter, to be seen to-day on the shores of Lake 

 Michigan, was a missile used by Nanahbozho in this chase. The 

 beaver was eventually caught in the Ottawa, and its head was 

 dashed against the rocky banks of the river where the Indians say 

 the marks of blood are still to be seen. 



In 1828, an English scientist, Mr. Charles Fothergill, made a 

 short sojourn in Montreal preparatory to visiting our great lone 

 lands. During his stay in our city, it happened that the Natural 

 History Society had invited essays on the subject of the "Quadru- 

 peds of British North America, ' ' offering a prize for the best contri- 

 bution. Mr. Fothergill became a party to the contest, thus eviden- 

 cing his knowledge of our fauna, and in the course of his paper he 

 makes the extraordinary admission that he has visited Canada with 

 a view of searching our great North-Western Provinces, if perchance 

 he might still find living evidence of ' ' the Mammoth, the great Elk 

 of the Antideluvians, and the giant Beaver; especially," says 

 Mr. Fothergill, " as the Indians have many legends concerning 

 these mammals, and Indian legends are seldom without some truth 

 for their foundation." The essay is a most interesting and valuable 

 survey of our mammals, and such faith had the essayist in the 

 objects of his search, that he enumerates, among Canadian animals 

 the Great Beaver, and says : — 



"I have been induced to name the Great Beaver in this cata- 

 logue because there is pretty certain evidence of the existence of 

 such an animal in various parts of the interior towards the North- 

 West. The Indians of many tribes firmly believe in its existence, 

 and assert they have often seen it. I will take, or endeavour to take, au 

 early opportunity to lay before the society such evidences as are in 

 my possession to prove the fact ; in the meanwhile, I will merely 

 remark that the skull which was found on the banks of the Dela- 

 ware nearly forty years ago — which induced the naturalists of the 

 United States to create a new genus under the title of Asteopera — 



