NOTES AND QUERIES. 177 



to attack the person who injured them, and their strength is so great as to 

 render them no despicable enemy. As an illustration of this fact, we 

 mention the following instance. At Barnborough, a village between 

 Doncaster and Barnsley, in Yorkshire, there is a tradition extant of a 

 serious conflict that once took place between a man and one of these 

 animals. The inhabitants say that the fight commenced in an adjacent 

 wood, and that it was continued from thence into the porch of the church. 

 It ended fatally to both combatants, for each died of the wounds received. 

 A rude painting in the church commemorates the event, and (as in many 

 similar traditions) the accidentally natural red tinge of the stones has been 

 construed into bloody stains which all the properties of soap and water have 

 not been able to efface." I have italicized the statement to which I have 

 referred as still admitting of verification, and I should be glad to know 

 whether the painting referred to is still to be seen in the church or is 

 preserved elsewhere; for if it is the fact that the combat in question 

 attracted so much notice at the time that a local artist depicted it on 

 canvas, and the painting is still to be seen, this circumstance goes far to 

 confirm the truth of the story. Perhaps some correspondent who has 

 visited Barnborough will enlighten us on the subject, or the Vicar may be 

 able to say whether such a painting ever hung in the church, and has been 

 removed to a place better suited for the display of such an unecclesiastical 

 subject. — J. E. Harting. 



Beavers on the Rhone and on the Elbe. — It may interest your 

 readers to know that the Beaver still exists in Western Europe. Some 

 fifteen years ago I saw a very large white Beaver in the Museum at Bayonne, 

 in France, which I was told was the last of its race found in Europe, and 

 which had been killed on the Bhone. But this year, being at Hyeres, where 

 there is a Museum with a very fine collection of indigenous birds and 

 quadrupeds, I found another fine specimen, colour light brown, measuring 

 three feet from snout to end of tail. This was obtained about four or five 

 years ago, and is one of several that were sent to M. Fiepi, a naturalist and 

 taxidermist of Marseilles, and which were taken in the Rhone at St. Meree, 

 in the neighbourhood of Aries. I obtained the following information from 

 M. Catal, the naturalist of the Hyeres Museum : — The Beaver was more 

 numerous formerly on the Rhone, but the great floods of 1846 destroyed 

 a large number, and made them more easily captured, and subsequent 

 inundations have made them much rarer. They are still to be found in the 

 Rhone and its affluents, the Gardon, the Durance and Isere below Valence, 

 also lower down the Rhone at Aries, Beaucaire and Taralcon. They seem to 

 have abandoned their custom of building huts and dams ; the race no longer 

 being sufficiently numerous to live in communities, they now live in deep 

 burrows. In 1827 a number of the huts of the Beaver were found on the 

 Elbe at its meeting with the Nuthe near Magdebourg, the spot still bearing 



