THE BEAVER e-jy 



vaguest or no significance ; at most one will be told ' a kind of otter.' " 

 He adds : — " One cannot but infer that the existence of the beaver in 

 Scotland must be relegated to a very remote period indeed, and that 

 they were extinct long before the time when they disappeared from 

 Wales. Possibly, too, they may have been always sparsely distributed, 

 and confined to a few favoured localities." It is sufficient to say here 

 that we are in full agreement with these conclusions. 



The history of the Beaver in western continental Europe resembles 

 that which we have traced in Britain. The animal was widespread, 

 although apparently scarce, during the Pleistocene. It became quite 

 common in the Neolithic period, when it appears to have played no 

 unimportant part in bringing about the swampy conditions favouring 

 the growth of peat. Its remains have been found, in abundance and at 

 a large number of localities, beneath the peat-mosses of Skandinavia, 

 Denmark, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and France. In Denmark it 

 became extinct before the historic period.^ Elsewhere, in face of 

 advancing civilisation, and partly because of direct persecution, colony 

 after colony has vanished, and the species has been brought close to 

 total extinction. In the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth 

 centuries, although its numbers had greatly diminished, colonies were 

 to be found in favourable localities scattered over a very large portion 

 of its former range. At the present time, so far as Western Europe is 

 concerned, the Beaver is found only in South-western Norway, in the 

 Elbe, and in the delta of the Rhone. In each of these localities it now 

 enjoys theoretically complete protection. Of these living colonies, 

 the Norwegian are the most important ; CoUett says several hundred 

 individuals must be living there, and their numbers are not at present 

 decreasing.^ 



The former wide distribution of the Beaver in continental Europe 

 is witnessed, in all countries save Iberia, by a very large number of 

 place-names ; lists of these will be found in Linstow's paper cited above. 



Distribution in time : — The geological history of C. fiber has 

 been discussed under History and Distribution. The earliest known 



' Winge, Vidensk. Medd. Naturh. Foren. Kobenhavn, 1904, 224 and 303 ; and 

 CoUett, Norges Pattedyr, i88. 



^ For a valuable summary of facts relating to former and present distribution of 

 Beavers and for Bibliography, see O. von Linstow, Die Verbreitung des Bibers im 

 Quartar. Abh. u. Ber. Mus. Nat. Heimatk. Magdeburg, 1908, i., 213-387. For 

 accounts of living colonies the following may be referred to : — A. H. Cocks, Zoologist, 

 •880,233,497; 1881,54; 1882, 15; 1885,479; CoUett, Nyt Mag. f. Naturvidensk., 

 1883, P- II ; 1898, 35 ; Bergens Mus. Aarbog, 1897, and Norges Pattedyr, 191 1, 186 ; 

 Harting, Zoo&^V^, 1886, 265; 1888, 182, 260; Mitford, ibid., 1896, 184; Mingaud, 

 ibid., 1896, 184 ; Bull. Soc. kt. Sc. Nat. Nimes, 1906 to 191 o. The colony in the 

 delta of the Rhone must be one of the most interesting in the world, for since there 

 is little or no timber at hand, the Beavers must lead what is practically the life of 

 a huge Water Rat. Nine captured when the water fell to an unusually low level in 



