Library of Cryptozoology

I have been induced to name the Great Beaver in this catalogue because there is pretty certain evidence of the existence of such an animal in various parts of the interior towards the North-West. The Indians of many tribes firmly believe in its existence, and assert they have often seen it. I will take, or endeavour to take, an early opportunity to lay before the society such evidences as are in my possession to prove the fact; in the meanwhile, I will merely remark that the skull which was found on the banks of the Delaware nearly forty years ago–which induced the naturalists of the United States to create a new genus under the title of Asteopera –and which skull is still preserved in the Philadelphia Museum, in my mind belonged, beyond all doubt, to this animal, which is still in existence in our remote lakes and rivers in the interior.

It is curious that the Indians of central Canada had a belief (recorded by French and English pioneers) that occasionally in the dusk, or at night, they have seen an enormously large beaver in the water, so large that at first sight they have taken it for a moose. Travellers who have related this have surmised that the Indian perhaps saw a bear swimming, or a female moose, and in the dim light mistook it for a giant beaver. But as we know that there were once giant beavers ( Trogontherium ) as large as a bear, existing in England, it is just possible there may have been a gigantic type of beaver lingering in Canada before the opening up of the country by Europeans.