Beaver 473 



have individuals, old males, that are outcasts or degenerates, 

 either from choice or necessity. Many strange theories are 

 brought forth by trappers and Indians to explain these. 

 This much only is certain, they are outcasts and they are 

 failures. 



*'It is a curious fact [says Prevost, the trapper'"] that 

 among the Beavers there are some that are lazy and will not 

 work at all, either to assist in building lodges or dams, or to 

 cut down wood for their winter stock. The industrious ones 

 beat these idle fellows, and drive them away, sometimes 

 cutting off part of their tails and otherwise injuring them. 

 These 'Paresseux' [idlers] are more easily caught in traps 

 than the others, and the trapper rarely misses one of them. 

 They only dig a hole from the water running obliquely toward 

 the surface of the ground twenty-five or thirty feet, from which 

 they emerge, when hungry, to obtain food, returning to the same 

 hole with the wood they procure, to eat the bark. 



**They never form dams, and are sometimes to the num- 

 ber of 5 or 7 together; all are males. It is not at all improbable 

 that these unfortunate fellows have, as is the case with the 

 males of many species of animals, been engaged in fighting 

 with others of their sex, and after having been conquered 

 and driven away from the lodge, have become idlers from a 

 kind of necessity. The working Beavers, on the contrary, 

 associate, male, females, and young together." 



Near Kippewa, however, I knew of a solitary he-Beaver 

 that did build a large dam in 1904. 



Morgan offers an explanation which at least puts the 

 "sluggards" on a higher plane. These ''outcasts" [says 

 he ^°] are probably such Beavers as, having lost their mates, 

 refused afterward to pair, and led thenceforth solitary lives in 

 burrows. 



In the far north the Wolverine is credited with being the EXEinEs 

 most formidable enemy of the Beaver, but it is difficult to see 



'^ Quoted by Audubon and Bachman, Q. N. A., Vol. I, p. 352. 

 " Am. Beaver, pp. 136-7. 



