BENNETTS ARTICLE ON THE BEAVER. 321 



History Society for 1829, aa extremely interesting account is 

 given by M. de Meyerinck of a colony of beavers, which hap 

 been settled for upwards of a century on a little river called the 

 Xuthe, about half a league above its confluence with the Elbe, 

 in a desert and sequestered canton in the district of Magdeburg. 

 Our author speaks of this little settlement as consisting, in the 

 year 1822, of no more than from fifteen to twenty individuals; 

 but few as they were they executed all the laborious tasks of a 

 much more extensive society. They formed themselves burrows 

 of thirty or forty paces in length, on a level with the stream, with 

 one opening below the surface of the water, and another upon 

 the land ; built huts eight or ten feet in height, of branches and 

 trunks of trees, laid without any regularity, and covered over 

 with soft earth ; and constructed of the same materials a dyke so 

 perfect as to raise the level of the water more than a foot. All 

 their habits indeed, as here described, coincide so exactly with 

 those of the American beavers, that we should feel some surprise 

 at M. de Meyerinck's assertion that they differed from them in 

 several particulars, and especially in their manner of building, 

 were it not manifest that his ideas of the transatlantic race were 

 gleaned from the relations of those travellers who have indulged 

 their imaginations, instead of relying upon their observations, in 

 all that they have written concerning these singular animals. 



The history of the beaver teems in fact with the most ridicu- 

 lous exaggerations. Even the absurdities of the ancients have 

 in this instance been exceeded by the credulity of the moderns. 

 The former, indeed, knew the animal only in a state compara- 

 tively solitary, and could not therefore attribute to him those 

 ideas of social policy and that settled system of government for 

 which the latter have given him unbounded credit. This delusion, 

 which was perhaps natural enough to those who took but a su- 

 perficial view of the faculties of this almost mechanical animal, 

 has now, however, passed away ; and the intelligence of the 

 beaver is recognized as nothing more than a remarkable instinct 

 exerted upon one particular object, and upon that alone. In all 

 respects, except as regards the skill with which he constructs his 

 winter habitation, and the kind of combination into which he 

 enters with his fellows for carrying their common purpose into 

 effect, his intelligence is of the most limited description. He has, 

 in fact, no need of those artful contrivances to which many ani- 



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