THE BEA FEE. 41 



remarks (par. iii. cap. v.), " Boethius dicit Fibrum sen 

 C'astorem in Scotia reperiri, an nunc reperiatur 

 nescio.'' 



It is more than probable, says Dr. Robert Brown, 

 that the worthy historians were influenced by a little 

 of the natural pride of country — the " perfervidum 

 ingenium Scotorum " — when they recorded the Beaver 

 as an inhabitant of Loch Ness in the fifteenth 

 century, since no mention is made of it in an Act of 

 Parliament dated June, 1424, although " mertricks, 

 foumartes, otters, and toddis " are specified. They 

 were perhaps so strongly impressed by the wide- 

 spread tradition of its existence in former days as to 

 lead them to enumerate it among the animals of 

 Scotland, and it may be observed that the authors 

 quoted boast immoderately of the productions of their 

 country. At the beginning of the century (at least) 

 the Highlanders had a peculiar name for the animal 

 — Losleathan * or Dobhran losleathan, the Broad- 

 tailed Otter ; and, according to Dr. Stewart of Luss, 

 in a letter to the late Dr. Patrick Neill, Secretary of 

 the Wernerian Society of Natural History, a tradi- 

 tion used to exist that the Beaver, or Broad-tailed 

 Otter, once lived in Lochaber. 



Of the Beaver in Scotland, says Stuart, f there is 

 later testimony than of the Bear. Like that animal, 

 it has left in its radical Gaelic name, Dobliar-Chu,% 



* Compare the Welsh. Llostlydan. 



f "Lays of the Deer Forest," vol. ii. p. 216. 



J In the modern confusion of obsolete terms, this name is some- 

 times confounded with that of the Otter, which is Bolhar-au. — 

 Stuart, op. cit. 



