CHAPTER I 
DESCRIPTION 
With the exception of the South American capybara, 
the beaver is the largest living representative of the order 
of Rodents, the Gnawers, to which the squirrels, rats, mice 
and similar animals belong. They are characterized by 
the large chisel-shaped front teeth or incisors. 
In external appearance a beaver is not so very unlike a 
huge, overgrown muskrat, with a rather short, wide, scaly 
tail, instead of a long, narrow, thin one, carried edgewise. 
Adults will run in total length from 40 to 45 inches, possibly 
more at times, of which length the tail will occupy from 12 
to 15 inches. 
The color above is a dark brown, with a dusky underfur 
of a considerably darker shade. The underparts are of a 
somewhat lighter color, inclining toward a pale chocolate 
brown. This color of the upper parts is that of the long, 
coarse outer or guard hairs, which are usually plucked out 
in preparing the skins for market. The color varies much 
in different parts of the animal’s geographic range, and 
black, or almost black, examples are not unknown, usually, 
if not always, from northern or western Canada, while 
the majority, if not all, of the paler-colored skins come from 
the southern portion of the beaver’s habitat. Vernon 
Bailey states: “So far as is at present known, the darkest, 
richest colored, and handsomest beaver fur is found native 
along the south shore of Lake Superior, in Northern Michi- 
gan and Wisconsin. In this region of heavy forests and 
deep snows the outer hairs of the animals are very dark 
brown, and the underfur is almost black. When tanned 
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