THE AMERICAN BEAVER. 



CHAPTER I. 



CHARACTERISTICS AND HABITAT OF THE AMERICAN 

 BEAVER; AND HIS POSITION IN THE ANIMAL KING- 

 DOM. 



Order Rodentia — Characteristics of the Order — The Beaver a Rodent — His 

 Color — Black Beaver — Albinos — His Size — Movements — Functions of Tail 

 — Vision short — Hearing and Smell acute — Social Propensities — Habitat 

 of American Beaver — Their Numbers — Habitat of European Beaver — 

 Fossil European Beaver — Trogontherium — Fossil American Beaver — Cas- 

 toroides — Great Antiquity of the Beaver Type — Systematic Position of 

 Castoridse — Brandt's Classification of the Rodentia — Independence of this 

 Family — American and European Beavers varieties of the same Species. 



In structural organization the beaver occupies a low 

 position in the scale of mammalian forms. His low 

 respiration and clumsy proportions render him slow 

 of motion; and being a coarse vegetable feeder, and 

 adapted both to water and to land, he is inferior to 

 the carnivorous, and even the herbivorous animals, in 

 those characteristics upon which the gradations of 

 structure are established. In intelligence and sagacity 

 he is undoubtedly below many of the carnivora which 

 depend exclusively for subsistence upon their skill in 

 entrapping and seizing prey; neither is it probable 

 that he is possessed of higher endowments than other 



2 (U) 



