e of the beaver's teeth. Judge the workman by his chips, and
this is a good workman.

When the dam is built the beaver cuts his winter food-wood. A colony
of the creatures will often fell a whole grove of young birch or
poplar on the bank above the dam. The branches with the best bark are
then cut into short lengths, which are rolled down the bank and
floated to the pool at the dam.

Considerable discussion has taken place as to how the beaver sinks his
wood--for of course he must sink it, else it would freeze into the ice
and be useless. One theory is that the beavers suck the air from each
stick. Two witnesses declare to me they have seen them doing it; and
in a natural history book of my childhood there is a picture of a
beaver with the end of a three-foot stick in his mouth, sucking the
air out. Just as if the beavers didn't know better, even if the absurd
thing were possible! The simplest way is to cut the wood early and
leave it in the water a while, when it sinks of itself; for green
birch and poplar are almost as heavy as water. They soon get
waterlogged and go to the bottom. It is almost impossible for
lumbermen to drive spool wood (birch) for this reason. If the nights
grow suddenly cold before the wood sinks, the beavers take it down to
the bottom and press it slightly into the mud; or else they push
sticks under those that float against the dam, and more under these;
and so on till the stream is full to the bottom, the weight of those
above keeping the others down. Much of the wood is lost in this way by
being frozen into the ice; but the beaver knows that, and cuts
plenty.

When a beaver is hungry in winter he comes down under the ice, selects
a stick, carries it up into his house, and eats the bark. Then he
carries the peeled stick back under the ice and puts it aside out of
the way.

Once, in winter, it occurred to me that soaking spoiled the flavor of
bark, and that the beavers might like a fresh bite. So I cut a hole in
the ice on the pool above their dam. Of course the chopping scared the
beavers; it was vain to experiment that day. I spread a blanket and
some thick boughs over the hole to keep it from freezing over too
thickly, and went away.

Next day I pushed the end of a freshly cut birch pole down among the
beavers' store, lay down with my face to the hole after carefully
cutting out the thin ice, drew a big blanket round my head and the
projecting end of the pole to shut out the light, and