168 THE AMERICAN BEAYER. 



character. Their practice of cutting down trees is 

 sufficiently well understood ; but precise information is 

 desirable as to the manner in which it is done, the size 

 of the trees felled, and the way in which the limbs are 

 reduced, removed, and stored for winter use. These 

 topics will form the subject of the present chapter. 



As beavers do not hibernate, they are compelled to 

 provide a store of subsistence for the long winters of 

 the North, during which their ponds are frozen over, 

 and the danger of venturing upon the land is so 

 largely increased as to shut them up, for the most part, 

 in their habitations. In preparing for the winter, 

 their greatest efforts in tree cutting are made. They 

 commence in the latter part of September, and con- 

 tinue through October and into November the several 

 employments of cutting and storing their winter 

 wood, and of repairing their lodges and dams. These 

 months are the season of their active labors, which 

 are only arrested by the early snows and the forma- 

 tion of ice in their ponds. It is a feature of the cli- 

 mate of the Lake Superior region, and I presume it is 

 equally true of that around Hudson's Bay, that the 

 snows begin to fall before the frost has entered the 

 ground, whence it is, that throughout the winter the 

 earth remains unfrozen, under a deep covering of snow. 

 In this we recognize a beneficent provision of the Cre- 

 ator for the welfare of the burrowing animals, without 

 which many of them would perish. The beavers, as 

 has elsewhere been stated, perform the most of their 

 work at night; but they come out early in the even- 

 ing, and continue at work during the early morning 

 hours. For the remainder of the day they are rarely 

 seen, except in regions where they are very numer- 



