ws as hands to convey 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 grayish-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 housebreaker, 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 housebreaker, 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 part