[Illustration: BEAVERS.]
These animals, which are celebrated all over the world for their
industrious habits and their intelligence, do not possess a very
pleasing appearance. The thick-set shape of the large head, small eyes,
cloven upper lip which shows its powerful incisors, the long and wide
tail, flattened like a spatula and covered with scales—combine to give
the animal an awkward appearance. The hind feet are larger than the
fore, and are fully webbed.
The Common Beaver is an aquatic animal; the structure of its feet and
tail enables it to swim with perfect facility. As these animals live
principally upon the bark of trees and other hard substances, their
front teeth are excessively strong, and by their assistance they are
enabled to cut down trees of considerable size, to be used in the
construction of the curious edifices for the erection of which they have
been long celebrated. Their mode of building, as adopted by the Beaver
of America, is described by Hearne with great exactness.
“The situation chosen is various where the Beavers are numerous. They
tenant lakes, rivers and creeks, especially the two latter for the sake
of the current, of which they avail themselves in the transportation of
materials. They also choose such parts as have a depth of water beyond
the freezing power to congeal at the bottom. In small rivers or creeks
in which the water is liable to be drained off when the back supplies
are dried up by the frost, they are led by instinct to make a dam quite
across the river, at a convenient distance from their houses, thus
artificially procuring a deep body of water in which to build.
“The dam varies in shape; where the current is gentle it is carried out
straight, but where rapid it is bowed, presenting a convexity to the
current. The materials used are drift wood, green willows, birch and
poplar, if they can be secured, and also mud and stones. These are
intermixed without order, the only aim being to carry out the work with
a regular sweep, and to make the whole of equal strength.
“Old dams by frequent repairing become a solid bank, capable of
resisting a great force of water and ice; and as the willows, poplars
and birches take root and shoot up, they form by degrees a sort of thick
hedgerow, often of considerable height. Of the same materials the houses
themselves are built, and in size proportionate to the number of their
respective inhabitants, which seldom exceeds four old and six or eight
young ones. The houses, however, are ruder in structure than the dam,
the only aim being to have a dry place to lie upon, and perhaps feed in.
“When the houses are large it often happens that they are divided by
partitions into two or three, or even more compartments, which have in
general no communication except by water; such may be called double or
treble houses rather than houses divided. Each compartment is inhabited
by its own possessors, who know their own door, and have no connection
with their neighbors, more than a friendly intercourse and joining with
them in the necessary labor of building.
“So far are the Beavers from driving stakes, as some have said, into the
ground when building, that they lay most of the wood crosswise, and
nearly horizontal, without any order than that of leaving a cavity in
the middle, and when any unnecessary branches project they cut them off
with their chisel-like teeth and throw them in among the rest to prevent
the mud from falling in; with this is mixed mud and stones, and the
whole compacted together. The bank affords them the mud, or the bottom
of the creek, and they carry it, as well as the stones, under their
throat, by the aid of their fore-paws; the wood they drag along with
their teeth.
“They always work during the night, and have been known during a single
night to have accumulated as much mud as amounted to some thousands of
their little handfuls. Every fall they cover the outsides of their
houses with fresh mud, and as late in the autumn as possible, even when
the frost has set in, as by this means it soon becomes frozen as hard as
a stone, and prevents their most formidable enemy, the Wolverine, or
Glutton, from disturbing them during the winter. In laying on this coat
of mud, they do not make use of their broad flat tails, as has been
asserted—a mistake which has arisen from their habit of giving a flap
with the tail when plunging from the outside of the house into the
water, and when they are startled, as well as at other times. The
houses, when completed, are dome-shaped, with walls several feet thick.”