SUBSISTENCE OF BEAVERS. 185 



is sweet flavored, and used by the Indians for food. 

 Undoubtedly the beavers of the west coast have 

 special inducements to attack the evergreen trees 

 which do not exist in other parts of their habitat. 



Pole cuttings of different lengths are often found 

 in their piles of winter wood, but they are generally 

 cut for present use. Fresh cuttings are rarely found 

 between the commencement of vegetation in the 

 spring and the first appearance of frost in the fall. 

 When the trapper begins to find them, he regards it 

 as a sign that they have commenced their fall work. 



After their cuttings of various lengths and sizes 

 have performed the first office for which they were 

 collected and stored, they are in the condition to be 

 most useful for repairing their lodges and dams. 

 Most of the sticks and poles found upon the tops of 

 their lodges and upon the lower faces of their dams 

 show conclusively that they were first cut and stored 

 for winter subsistence, then carried into the lodge and 

 the bark eaten off", after which they were thrown out 

 into the pond, to be again gathered and applied to the 

 purposes named. This is not always the case with 

 respect to their lodges, some of which I have found 

 covered with a mass of poles of black alder, with the 

 bark on ; upon their dams, also, brush and drift-wood 

 are often found; but these cuttings are the usual 

 materials used for repairing both. 



There is another class of brush cuttings, the prin- 

 cipal object and use of which are involved in some 

 doubt. In streams having considerable volume, which 

 are liable to rise suddenly after rains or thaws, and 

 develop currents more or less strong, a brush-heap 

 (Fig. 21) is almost universally found sunk in the pond 



