158 CASTOROLOGIA. 



and also providing tiie camp witli abundant firewood. Another ac- 

 count of a tame beaver, which appears in Wilson's "Early Notices 

 of the Beaver," is told by a Mr. John Langton, and shows the fate 

 of most of these creatures. The owner of this beaver had no furni- 

 ture to gnaw, being an old trader married to a squaw, and living 

 more like an Indian than a white man. " His favourite was quite 

 tame, and very playful, and though he lived on the shore of Buck- 

 horn Lake, the beaver seldom took to the water. It used to lie be- 

 fore the fire as contentedly as a dog ; and it was not till winter set 

 in that it became a nuisance. Poor old Bill McHugh's house was 

 well ventilated, an open chink between the logs being thought very 

 little of by him and his family ; but the beaver was very impatient 

 of such negligence, and used to work all night at making things air- 

 tight and comfortable without much discrimination as to the mate- 

 rials it employed. If Bill or his guests went to bed leaving their 

 moccasins and tichigans drying before the fire, they were certain to 

 be found in the morning stowed away in some chink or cranny ; and 

 stray blankets and articles of clothing were torn up by the industri- 

 ous beaver for the same purpose. The consequence was that the 

 poor pet was at length sacrificed ; its body went into the old trader's 

 pot, and its skin to market. ' ' 



These anecdotes of tame beavers could be much extended if 

 necessary, but enough has been said to show how thoroughly domes- 

 tic the beaver becomes, (using this word to imply its adaptability to 

 a life with man as a member of his household), yet when beavers 

 are gathered together in colonies or families, and allowed only par- 

 tial freedom, they do not thrive. Of the ultimate results of the early 

 attempts in Russia, Germany and France to preserve the beaver, 

 history only tells us that they failed, but without exact records of 

 these experiments, they are of no practical value towards the solution 

 of the problem, why, in the face of powerful legislation to preserve 

 them, did the beavers disappear ? The more recent attempt made by 

 the Marquis of Bute, to establish a colony of Canadian beavers, near 

 Rothesay, in Scotland, is a matter of intense interest at this juncture, 

 and as the story of the founding of the colony, together with some 

 details of its subsequent condition, has been told by Joseph Stuart 



