Beaver 455 



weight. The mud is got in the handiest way, the nearest place, 

 that is, by diving to the bottom of the pond just above the dam. 

 This has a tendency to enlarge the pond, so that in most cases 

 it is widest and deepest just above the dam. 



Thus it is seen that interlacing branches are the Beavers' 

 safeguard against a washout, just as they are of human engi- 

 neers who are forced to use wildwood material. 



The labour of the Beaver knows no end, no dam is ever perpet- 

 finished or beyond need of repairs. Morgan remarks^" that vigil- 

 "dams begin to decay as soon as they are deserted by the ''^'"' 

 Beavers and quickly thereafter disappear," which is sur- 

 prising, considering their solidity, but evidently true, for the 

 eastern part of America abounds in beaver-meadows, that is, 

 beaver-pond bottoms, yet it is very rarely indeed that one 

 sees traces of the dams that made them. 



Two of my observations in contradiction of popular belief 

 I was glad to have confirmed by Morgan: 



I St. Among the scores of dams examined I never saw 

 anything of the nature of a stake; that is to say, the Beavers 

 do not drive stakes. 



2d. Beavers rarely use logs. But once have I seen a 

 log used. Morgan also mentions a case;'' it was i out of 63, 

 and that he considered accidental, possibly even that the tree 

 fell on the dam, as it was a tree that had been blown down, 

 not felled by Beavers. 



It is easy to see how by perpetual work through generations 

 the Beavers must in time turn the stick dam into the bank dam. 

 For the sticks tend to decay and disappear except where re- 

 placed to fortify the overflow, and the rest of the dam must 

 settle into a solid grass-grown mass. 



The best opportunity I ever had to study Beaver work was 

 in the Yellowstone Park in 1897. On Lost Creek, not far 

 from Yancey's, where I stayed some months, was a family of 

 Beavers with their usual contrivances to make a great pond of 

 a very little stream. It was from this colony that Ellwood 



"•Am. Beaver, pp. 123-4. ''Ibid., p. no. 



