and in prime, suffered the same fate. The house had been destroyed; and
if one beaver chanced to escape into some of the bank-holes under water
or up the side channels, he could be depended upon to warn all beaver
from that country. Only the degenerate white man practises bad hunting.

The skilled hunter has other methods.

If unstripped saplings be yet about the bank of the stream, the beavers
have not finished laying up their winter stores in adjacent pools. The
trapper gets one of his steel-traps. Attaching the ring of this to a
loose trunk heavy enough to hold the beaver down and drown him, he
places the trap a few inches under water at the end of a runway or in
one of the channels. He then takes out a bottle of castoreum. This is a
substance from the glands of a beaver which destroys all traces of the
man-smell. For it the beavers have a curious infatuation, licking
everything touched by it, and said, by some hunters, to be drugged into
a crazy stupidity by the very smell. The hunter daubs this on his own
foot-tracks.

Or, if he finds tracks of the beaver in the grass back from the bank, he
may build an old-fashioned deadfall, with which the beaver is still
taken in Labrador. This is the small lean-to, with a roof of branches
and bark--usually covered with snow--slanting to the ground on one side,
the ends either posts or logs, and the front an opening between two logs
wide enough to admit half the animal's body. Inside, at the back, on a
rectangular stick, one part of which bolsters up the front log, is the
bait. All traces of the hunter are smeared over with the elusive
castoreum. One tug at the bait usually brings the front log crashing
down across the animal's back, killing it instantly.

But neither the steel-trap nor the deadfall is wholly satisfactory. When
the poor beaver comes sniffing along the castoreum trail to the
steel-trap and on the first splash into the water feels a pair of iron
jaws close on his feet, he dives below to try and gain the shelter of
his house. The log plunges after him, holding him down and back till he
drowns; and his whereabouts are revealed by the upend of the tree.

But several chances are in the beaver's favour. With the castoreum
licks, which tell them of some other beaver, perhaps looking for a mate
or lost cub, they may become so exhilarated as to jump clear of the
trap. Or, instead of diving down with the trap, they may retreat back up
the bank and amputate the imprison