"As well as being persecuted for their dense underfur, which made the best felt hats, beavers have long interested naturalists for their aquatic adaptations and unique behaviour of modifying their environment. There have, as usual, been some strange ideas. The Comte de Buffon, the 18th-century French naturalist and writer of the 36-volume Histoire Naturelle, asserted that ‘the Beaver has a scaly tail, because he eats fish’."