vey food to its mouth, sitting the while in an erect
position on its hind-legs and tail. Its fur is a dense coat of a
greyish-coloured down, concealed by long coarse hair, which lies smooth,
and is of a bright chestnut colour. Its teeth and jaws are of enormous
power; with them it can cut through the branch of a tree as thick as a
walking-stick at one snap; and, as we have said, it gnaws through thick
trees themselves.

As soon as a tree falls, the beavers set to work industriously to lop
off the branches, which, as well as the smaller trunks, they cut into
lengths, according to their weight and thickness. These are then
dragged by main force to the water side, launched, and floated to their
destination. Beavers build their houses, or "lodges," under the banks
of rivers and lakes, and always select those of such depth of water that
there is no danger of their being frozen to the bottom; when such cannot
be found, and they are compelled to build in small rivulets of
insufficient depth, these clever little creatures dam up the waters
until they are deep enough. The banks thrown up by them across rivulets
for this purpose are of great strength, and would do credit to human
engineers. Their "lodges" are built of sticks, mud, and stones, which
form a compact mass; this freezes solid in winter, and defies the
assaults of that house-breaker, the wolverine, an animal which is the
beaver's implacable foe. From this "lodge," which is capable often of
holding four old and six or eight young ones, a communication is
maintained with the water below the ice, so that, should the wolverine
succeed in breaking up the lodge, he finds the family "not at home,"
they having made good their retreat by the back-door. When man acts the
part of house-breaker, however, he cunningly shuts the back-door
_first_, by driving stakes through the ice, and thus stopping the
passage. Then he enters, and, we almost regret to say, finds the family
at home. We regret it, because the beaver is a gentle, peaceable,
affectionate, hairy little creature, towards which one feels an
irresistible tenderness! But, to return from this long digression.

Our trappers having selected their several localities, set their traps
in the water, so that when the beavers roamed about at night, they put
their feet into them, and were caught and drowned; for, although they
can swim and dive admirably, they cannot live altogether under water.

Thus the different parti