CASTOR FIBER. 23 



where the hunting of these animals, and collecting their furs, 

 forms a very important object of commercial traffic. In an- 

 tient times the beaver was a more general inhabitant of Europe 

 than it is at present, particularly in the vicinity of some 

 of the larger rivers, as the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Danube, 

 where they are now comparatively scarce, and in Britain they 

 have been wholly extirpated for many centuries. That the Beaver 

 was once indigenous to different parts of Britain, particularly Wales 

 and Scotland, is certain, upon the credit of the most authentic 

 records ; and the fact of its having been one of the native qua- 

 drupeds of Scotland, has received the most ample confirmation 

 from the occurrence of the fossil remains of the animal in Perth- 

 shire and Berwickshire.* The earliest written authority we have 

 of the existence, in former times, of the Beaver in Wales, is con- 

 tained in a remarkable document of the ninth century, — the Laws 

 of Howel the Good,f where the price of the Beaver's skin is esti- 

 mated at no less than 120 pence. The latest account of this sub- 

 ject is contained in the " Itinerarium" of Sylvester Giraldus,J who 

 travelled through Wales in 1188, or about 300 years after the 

 date of Howel Dha. He gives a brief history of their manners ; 

 and adds that, in his time, the Beaver, distinguished by the 

 descriptive and appropriate title of Llosdlydan, or " broad tail," 

 was only found on the confines of the river Teivi, in Cardiganshire. 

 In their natural state, they subsist entirely on vegetable food, such 

 as roots, young wood, and the bark of trees ; they are very partial 

 to the roots of the Magnolia glauca, which in America is known 

 by the names of white laurel, swamp sassafrass, and Beaver tree ; 

 the poplar, aspin, and birch, are the favourite food of the European 

 beavers. During summer, when these are to be obtained in great 

 abundance, the beavers pass that season in wandering about the mea - 

 dows and thickets that border the lakes and rivers which abound in 

 North America. On the approach of winter, they quit their roaming 



* See an interesting paper on llie Beavers of Scotland, by Mr. Patrick Neill, in (be 

 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. i. p. 177. 

 t Leges U'allicce, by Dr. Wot ton, book iii. § 11, 12. 

 J Itin erarium Cambria, lib. ii. cap. 3. 



