" In respect to the beavers dunging in their houses, as some persons assert, it is quite wrong, as they always plunge into water to do it. I am the better enabled to make this assertion from having kept several of them till they became so domesticated as to answer to their name, and follow those to whom they were accustomed in the same manner as a dog would do, and they were as much pleased at being fondled as any animal I ever saw. In cold weather they were kept in my own sitting-room, where they were the constant companions of the Indian women and children, and were so fond of their company that when the Indians were absent for any considerable time, the beaver discovered great signs of uneasiness, and on their return showed equal marks of pleasure by fondling on them, crawling into their laps, lying on their backs, sitting erect like a squirrel, and behaving like children who see their parents but seldom. In general during the winter they lived on the same food as the women did, and were remarkably fond of rice and plum-pudding; they would eat patridges and fresh venison very freely, but I never tried them with fish, though I have heard they will at times prey on them. In fact there are few graminivorous animals that may not be brought to be carnivorous." Mr. Broderip, in his 'Note-Book of a Naturalist,' p. 1, gives an interesting account of the manners and habits of a pet Beaver during its captivity. It manifested the same instincts, though exercised upon very different materials, as those described so graphically in the above passage from Hearne.
Little need be said of the value of the fur of the Beaver in commerce, a value matly heightened by the proclamation of Charles I. iu 1638, expressly prohibiting the use of any materials except beaver-stuff or beaver-wool in the manufacture of hats, and forbidding the making of the hats called 'demi-castors,' unless for exportation. This proclamation was an almost exterminating death-warrant to the poor beavers. They were speedily swept away from the more southern colonies, and the traffic became for the most part confined to Canada and Hudson's Bay. The havoc made amongst them, even at that period, may be imagined by an inspection of the imports of 1743. In that year the Hudson's Bay Company offered for sale 26,750 beaver-skins, and in'the same year 127,080 were imported into Rochelle. These, it will be remem bered, are only the legal returns, making no allowance for smuggling. In 1788 upwards of 170,000 were exported from Canada, and iu 1808 126,927 were sent from Quebec alone to this country. The value of these last has been estimated at 118,994/. 18. 3d. sterling, at an average of 188. 9d. for each skin. These numbers, as might be expected, could not be kept up without almost total extermination ; and we find, accordingly, that in 1827 the importation into London from a fur country of more than four times the extent of that which was occupied in 1743 was but little beyond 50490. At the present time (1853) about 60,000 beaver-skins are annually imported into this country, of which 12,000 are again exported. Many other materials
are now employed for making hats.
The Beaver, although some have considered it another species, is an inhabitant of Europe. The earliest notice of the European Beaver (sciarap) is in Herodotua (book iv. c. 109), who describes it as inhabit ing a large lake in the country of the Budini, a nation whom he places on the east aide of the Upper Don (iv. 21). Ho says that the skin was used for clothing. Aristotle (book viii. c. 5) mentions the European Beaver under the name of *derma), but only mentions it ; while Pliny (viii. 30, and xxxii. 3, ae.) well describes it, and in diffuse on the subject of the celebrated Caetoreinn, no much valued as a medicine among the ancients, and which long held a high place in the Materin Medics of the modern*, causing the persecution of this unfortunate animal before its fur became an object of traffic. Pliny points out the frauds of dealers, but shows that he did not know what the castoreum really was. " Cantorea testes corm," writes Pliny (book xxxii. c. 3), and the ancients inform us that the animal used to bite off the part when hunted, well knowing that with the possession of the desired castorea the persecution would cease. Tina however is untrue, as it would be utterly impossible for the animal to do so if it wished. Cuvier gives the following account of the organs which accrete this substance :—" Do grosses pother, glanduleuses qui abou tissent h lour prepuce produbssent une renamed° d'une odeur forte, employs e en medicine sous he nom de castoreum." Sir John Richardson thus speaks of this substance " 1 have not had an opportunity of dissecting a beaver, but I was informed by the hunters that both males and females are furnished with one pair of little bags containing ca.storeum, and also with a second pair of smaller ones betwixt the former and the anus, which are filled with a 'White fatty matter, of the consistence of butter and exhaling a strong odour. This latter substance is not an article of trade; but the Indians occa sionally eat it, and also mingle a little with their tobacco when they smoke. I did not learn the purpose that this secretion is destined to serve in the economy of the animal; but from the circumstance of small ponds when inhabited by beavers being tainted with its peculiar odour, it seems probable that it affords a dressing to the fur of these aquatic animals. The castoreum in its recent state has an orange colour, which deepens as it dries into bright reddish-brown. During the drying, which is allowed to go on in the shade, a gummy matter exudes through the sack, which the Indians delight in eating. The male and female castoreum is of the same value, ten pairs of bags of either kind being reckoned to an Indian an equal to one beaver-skin. The castoreum is never adulterated in the Fur Countries." The same traveller says that the call of the beaver in the pairing season is a kind of groan, and gives the following as the dimensions of a full-grown beaver killed at Great Slave Lake, and now in the museum of the Zoological Society:— Inches. Lines.