Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/246

220

An Albino of the Beaver (Castor canadensis).—From all accounts by those in a position to know, the Beaver seems to be following the Buffalo into a precarious existence. Before long now both may have undergone the fate of so many other extinct species. It is therefore of importance that any items of information about the Beaver should be placed upon record. So far as I can find in the limited literature of the subject within my reach, no notice seems to have been taken of albinism in the Beaver, though doubtless the variation takes place as frequently in the species as in other animals. On the walls of the Mansion House of Mavisgrove here, there has hung for several generations past a square glazed case which contains a very beautiful pure white Beaver skin. Not long ago I had the privilege of examining it, and, although it is now one hundred and twentyone years since it was made into a specimen, the skin is still in the best of preservation. There is a printed label attached, but the record thereon is merely a paraphrase of a written statement, now faded greatly, which is gummed to the back of the case. The written document is as follows:—"In the year 1777 Mr. Joseph Aimse, the Indian interpreter at Michilimackinac, informed Colonel de Peyster, then Major to the Kings Regt., and Commandant of that post, situated at the confluence of the Lakes Huron and Michigan, that an Indian had been seen standing for several days at the corner of the storehouse, who had just informed him that he had been directed by a spirit in the form of an Amik Waubascan (white Beaver), whilst slumbering in the Great Beaver Island, to take his stand there, and kill the commandant as he passed; but, finding his heart fail to give the fatal blow, he begged to be sent out of that part of the country which the commandant refused, but ordered him to go to the island and fetch him the white Beaver, which the Indian accordingly did; and this is the skin of it.—(Signed) " Apparently this document is in the handwriting of Col. Arentz Schuyler de Peyster himself, who, as I find from a short biographical notice in McDowall's 'Sketches from Nature,' pp. 314-321, was a Dutchman by extraction, but a Briton by