[393] Topographia Hiberniæ, c. 21, and Itinerarium Cambriæ, l. ii. c. 3.
Dr. Patrick Neill, in a valuable paper on this subject,[394] has given an account of the bones of recent beavers found in Perthshire and Berwickshire. They have also been found in Cambridgeshire[395]. We learn from the life of Wulstan[396], that beaver-furs, as well as those of sables, foxes, and other quadrupeds, were used by the Anglo-Saxons in very early times for lining their garments. Other modern authors speak of their occurrence in Austria, Hungary, and the North of Italy[397]. They are still found in Sweden[398]. Strabo informs us, that in his time they frequented the rivers of Spain[399].
[394] Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, vol. i. p. 177-187.
[395] Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, vol. i. part i. p. 175.
[396] See Extracts in Henry’s History of Britain, vol. iv.
[397] Muratori, Antichità Italiane, tomo ii. p. 110. Napoli, 1783. The authors, cited by Muratori, are Gervase of Tilbury, and Mathioli.
[398] Travels in Sweden, by Dr. Thomas Thomson, p. 411.
[399] Lib. iii. 163. vol. i. p. 737, ed. Siebenkees.
Buffon says (Hist. Nat. tome 26. p. 98.), “There are beavers in Languedoc in the islands of the Rhone, and great numbers of them in the North of Europe.” “But as human population extends,” he observes, “beavers, like other animals, are dispersed, become solitary, fugitive, or conceal themselves in the ground: they cease to unite in bands, to engage in building or other undertakings.”
“We have been unable to ascertain,” says Cuvier[400], “after the most scrupulous comparisons, if the Castors or Beavers, which burrow along the Rhone, the Danube, and the Weser, are different in species from those of North America, or if they are prevented from building by the vicinity of man.” The same distinguished author in his work on Fossil Bones says, “The greater part of our European rivers having formerly supported beavers, and some of them doing so still, viz. the Gardon and the Rhone in France, the Danube in Bavaria and Austria, and several small rivers in Westphalia and Saxony, we cannot be surprised to find their hones preserved in our mosses, or turbaries.” He then mentions instances of the heads and teeth of beavers, in the valley of the Somme in Picardy, in the valley of Tonnis-stein near Andermach, and at Urdingen on the Rhine in Rhenish Prussia[401].