670 CASTORID^— CASTOR 



Old World formerly covered the whole of the forested region of 

 Eurasia, from Lapland and Northern Russia southwards to Spain, 

 Italy, and the Euphrates, and from Great Britain eastwards at least as 

 far as the Lena. The Asiatic limits of its distribution are, however, 

 still imperfectly known. 



The remarkable habits and powers of the Beaver, its appearance, 

 its beautiful fur, and its possession of castoreum — that secretion which 

 through long ages was regarded by physicians as a panacea — could 

 not fail to attract human attention from the very earliest times. 

 Accordingly we find the animal described or noticed in many of the 

 most ancient writings which have survived to our day, while etymological 

 research indicates that the name " beaver " itself dates from a time far 

 beyond the reach of any documentary evidence in our possession. 

 In this place only a few of the more salient facts can be mentioned, but 

 reference may be made to the great essay on the Beaver by Brandt,^ who 

 dealt exhaustively with the classical references and commentaries, and 

 for the first time collected the many scattered fruits of previous research. 



The word " beaver " is in one form or another common to all the 

 Indo-Germanic languages, and it is traceable, with its equivalents the 

 Sanskrit babhru, the old Persian baovara or baoara, and the nearly 

 allied Arabic viverra, to the Old Aryan bebhrus : the latter, according to 

 the Afew English Dictionary, is a reduplicated derivative of Mr« = brown, 

 with sense of " brown '' or " red-brown " or " brown water animal." 

 It does not follow, therefore, that in every instance, when using a 

 derivative of bebhrus, early writers were speaking of the Beaver. Any 

 brown fur-bearing animal would be a " beaver " to the earliest Aryans. 

 Gradually the use of the word was limited solely to such brown fur- 

 bearing animals as were of aquatic habits, and during this period it 

 signified not merely the Beaver, but the Otter, Ichneumon, and Water 

 Rat as well. This comparatively restricted meaning was acquired 

 certainly by the time the sacred writings of the old Persian and Indian 

 peoples were written, for in them " beavers " are clearly indicated as 

 water-dwellers and their killing is expressly forbidden. In fact, as 

 regards certain of the Persian documents, both Spiegel and Brandt 

 were inclined to think that the context showed that baovara really 

 indicated the Beaver and no other animal, and that, therefore, the word 

 had acquired, between 300 and 400 B.C., its modern fully restricted 

 significance. 



The ancient Greek writers called the Beaver -)(aa-ru>p or castor, and 

 its peculiar secretion -)(aaT6piov. The words castor and castoreum 

 appear to be connected with and perhaps are derived from the Indian 

 kasturi or kastora, which signify the musk-glands and secretion of the 

 Musk Deer, Mosckus. These glands have a somewhat similar appear- 



' J. F. Brandt, Mem. Sc. Nat Imp. Acad., St Petersburg, vii., 1855, 78 and 339. 



