672 CASTORID^— CASTOR 



not very well employ the adjective lurchi, demanded by the rhyme, in 

 connection with his own countrymen. 



Beavers lived in the delta of the Po as late as the sixteenth 

 century; a specimen was dissected in 1541 by Amatus Lusitanas at 

 Ferrara, and Bebriacum is an ancient place-name (between Cremona 

 and Verona) recalling their former occurrence. 



Beavers do not appear to have ever reached Ireland, although in Great 

 Britain the genus dates from the Pliocene, and C. fiber itself perhaps 

 from the Pleistocene. This absence from Ireland, among other facts, led 

 Dr Scharff to believe that Ireland was separated from Britain in early 

 or pre-Pleistocene times. That seems a too remote period for the 

 rupture ; but it is possible that the area of the present Irish Sea was 

 then so depressed, marshy, and devoid of woodland as to fail to tempt 

 the Beaver to proceed westwards of Great Britain. 



In England, jaws and teeth of species not certainly distinguishable, 

 with such materials, from C. fiber have been found, in scanty numbers, 

 in the Upper Freshwater Bed (Cromerian) of West Runton, and in 

 several of the Pleistocene river deposits — as in those of the Thames at 

 Ilford, Grays and Clacton in Essex. Numerous skulls and several more 

 or less complete skeletons of C. fiber have been recovered from the 

 peaty deposits, dating variously from the Neolithic, Bronze and Romano- 

 British periods. The earliest discovery of the kind appears to have 

 been made by Dr John Collet in 1757 : he records the finding of " heads 

 of Beavers," with the bones of other prehistoric animals, in a peat pit 

 at Newbury, Berkshire {Phil. Trans., 1757, 100). John Hunter received 

 later part of a skull and a lower jaw from a mosspit in Berkshire : these 

 specimens quite likely came from Newbury, whence further remains 

 were described by Owen in 1846 {Cat. Foss. Roy. Coll. Surg., 1845, 35 

 and 244). In 1 8 1 8 Okes recorded two lower jaws from the dried bed 

 of an old channel — " the West Water " — connecting the Nene with the 

 Ouse near Chatteris ; this ancient water-way had been choked up for 

 more than two centuries. Since those early days many discoveries 

 of the kind have been made in England — in Somerset, Devon, 

 Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire, the fens of Cambridge, Suffolk, 

 Norfolk, and Lincolnshire, in Yorkshire, and in the valleys of the 

 Thames and its tributaries in Middlesex, Essex, and Kent. As 

 examples clearly dating from Romano-British times may be cited the 

 finding of Beaver remains at Glastonbury and the discovery, by 

 Cocks, of a nearly complete mandibular ramus in the Romano- 

 British pile-village at Hedsor, Bucks. One of the most recent " finds " 

 was made when enlarging the Royal Albert Docks at Canning Town 

 in 191 1 ; a nearly complete skeleton (now in the British Museum) 

 was there found buried in the Alluvium, beneath a prostrate 

 tree-trunk. 



