152 The Animal-Lore of Bhahspeare s Time. 
times past the only British river that harboured these 
animals. 
“ This beaver,” he says, “ is a creature living both on land and water, 
footed before like a dog, and behind like a goose, with an ash-coloured 
skin somewhat blackish, haviug a long taile, broad and gristly, which 
in his floting he useth in lieu of a sterne. Concerning the subtile 
wilinesse of which creatures, Giraldus hath observed many things, 
but at this daie none of them are to be seene.” 
Drayton, in his PolyoTbion , has a long account of the 
beaver, and its mode of building, but as he is indebted to 
some earlier writer for his information, and not to personal 
observation, the passage is hardly worth quoting. Mr. 
Frank Buckland, in his Curiosities of Natural History, 
gives it as his opinion that beavers could not have been 
common at any time in this country, as he has never seen 
a beaver’s bone or tooth among ancient British or Saxon 
remains :— 
“ These former inhabitants of Great Britain used much bone in their 
household implements, and had beavers been common, we should 
probably find some bone or otlfer converted to some useful domestic 
purpose.” (First series, 1873, p. 90.) 
Beaver hats were considered as an extravagant 
luxury in the time of Elizabeth. Philip Stubbes speaks 
of them in terms of high indignation, and says they cost 
twenty, thirty, and forty shillings apiece, and “were 
fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort 
of other vanities do come besides.” 
“The Squirrell,” says Topsell,'“is greater in compasse then a 
weasil, but a weasil is longer than a squirrel. The 
Squirrel. mouth of their nest is variable, sometimes at the sides, 
and sometimes at the top, but most commonly it is shut 
against the winde, and therefore I thinke that shee maketh many 
passages, stopping and opening them as the winde turneth. In 
summer time they gather together abundance of fruits and nuttes for 
winter, even so much as their little dray will liolde and containe, 
which they carrie in their mouthes, and they lodge manie times two 
