bull] some brook loving ARCHITECTS 333 



leather, and you have a fair pictvire of him. His short feet are 

 Avebbed for swimming and his teeth look like those of mice, but are 

 large and strong. He stands against a tree on his hind legs when 

 cutting it down, pushes a log ahead of him when swimming, and 

 when carr^dng one on shore he holds it under his chin. Mud he 

 carries on his nose, and some people say also on the fiat tail. And 

 this is the four-legged architect who builds lodges for a family of 

 six or seven, and dams as long as a house and higher than a man's 

 head. 



Many generations of beavers have passed since the little stream 

 was first backed up. Since then the water must have covered the 

 first homestead, and the next, and the next, as the dam grew higher 

 and the lake deeper. If we could walk along the bottom I think 

 we should find the stumps of the first trees that were cut down and 

 the remains of the old lodges. Our story will tell of the lake as it 

 now is, of the dams that formed it, and of the houses where the 

 builders now live. 



Between the Beaver pond and the lake from which it takes its 

 water is a series of little waterfalls, and an old lumberchute. The 

 water looks black because of the dead trees that are in it. All 

 along its edge stand the bodies of hemlocks and pines, drowned by 

 the rising water and bleached white by the sunshine of many years. 

 The pond is a regular flower garden, and white water lilies float 

 silently on its black surface. Small islands of rotted moss float 

 here and there ; it is on a bigger island of this same moss — sphag- 

 num, it is called — that the beaver lodges are built. At the outlet 

 is a big granite rock, covered partially with trees and bushes. On 

 each side of this is a dam about thirty feet long, and as the water 

 from the two sides unites into one stream a little farther down, it 

 forms an island. 



Look at the picture and you can see for yourself how the dam 

 slants backward from its base, how the sticks are laid together with 

 moss chinked in between, and how the upper ones project above the 

 level of the water. Compare the dam with the canoe at its top, 

 and you can see how high it is. And all this was made by small 

 animals, their only tools a pair of sharp gnawing teeth ! They kept 

 the bark for food, storing some of it away for winter, and used the 

 bare sticks to build their dam. 



Over to one side of the pond are the houses, looking like a wood- 

 pile among the low, thick plants that crowd upon the moss island. 



