CHAPTER VI. 



SUBSISTENCE OF BEAVERS. 



Subsistence exclusively Vegetable — Kinds of Bark preferred — Roots of 

 Plants — Incisive Teeth Chisels — Their cutting Power — It diminishes with 

 Age — Provisions for Winter — Season for collecting — Felling Trees — 

 Their size — Number of Beavers engaged — Manner of cutting — Chips — 

 Short Cuittings — Moving them on Land — Floating them in Water — Sink- 

 ing them in Piles — Wood-eating — Evidence that they eat Clear Wood — 

 Brush-heap at Lodge restricted to Particular Places — Their Use — Ponds 

 in Winter — Winter Life of Beavers. 



The nutriment of the beaver is drawn exclusively 

 from the vegetable kingdom. They subsist princi- 

 pally upon the bark of deciduous trees. Where the 

 variety is large, they prefer, as is shown by their cut- 

 tings, yellow birch, cotton-wood, poplar, and willow. 

 These are their chief reliance. They also eat the 

 bark of the soft and bird's-eye maple, of the walnut, 

 and of the black and white ash, together with various 

 kinds of roots, such as those of the pond lily, and of 

 the coarse grasses that grow in the margins of their 

 ponds. Late in the winter they eat clear wood, and 

 such roots as they can reach from their burrows or 

 find in the banks. This subject of wood eating will 

 be referred to again. In the summer they rarely cut 

 large trees, but live upon the bark of the smaller ones, 

 upon willow and raspberry bushes, and upon different 

 kinds of roots. Notwithstanding the great abund- 

 ance of food at this season of the year, they are usu- 

 ally the fattest in the winter. 

 (166) 



