ways of the beaver can believe that he is
not exceedingly intelligent. The banks of these canals soon become
covered with growing plants and moss, and they look not unlike slow
sluggish streams winding through the marshy lands.

[Illustration: THE BEAVER IS THE GREATEST OF ALL ANIMAL ARCHITECTS. HIS
SKILL IS EQUALLED ONLY BY HIS PATIENCE.]

The beaver huts, or "lodges" as they are usually called, look not unlike
beehives, somewhat broader at the base, with thick walls and roof,
four to six feet in thickness. They are formed of numbers of poles,
twigs, and small branches of trees, woven together and plastered with
mud, in the same way that the dams are made. Inside the house are
circular chambers formed of mud, which have been smoothed and polished
like waxed floors by the feet of the occupants. Around the outer border
of each polished floor is dry grass used for Mrs. Beaver's nursery, and
here the young beavers sleep and play.

From the outside these beaver huts resemble Esquimaux snow-houses, being
almost circular in form, and domed. The walls are quite thick enough to
keep out the cold, but with all the beaver's ingenuity, he is helpless
against trappers. Summer and winter they are hunted, until now they are
fast becoming extinct. How few people seem fully to realise and care
what is being done to wild animals! They do not seem to know that it is
a crime to take the life of a being unnecessarily. Only human life is
sacred to them! To realize the wonderful work of beavers, and then to
act as we do toward them is unworthy of our civilisation.

An interesting cousin of the beaver, the musquash or muskrat, and called
by the Indians the beaver's "little brother," is also a house-builder
and engineer of no mean abilities. He is at home throughout the greater
part of North America, and, like the beaver, frequents the regions of
slowly flowing streams and large, reed-bordered ponds. Here he mingles
in groups of his own kin, and together they build houses, work and play,
dive and swim, with almost as much skill as their big beaver brothers.

The muskrat is a skilled engineer, and delights in tunnelling. His home
consists of a large rounded chamber which is reached by a long burrow
from the side of a stream. From his main living-room are oftentimes
found a number of smaller chambers or galleries, and these are used to
store food in the form of delicate roots and bits of bark. Some of the
more ambitious muskrats build large