CHAP THERA 
THe LopGE ~ 
The beaver’s lodge, house, or hut, is the second of those 
structures which have given the animal a reputation as a 
builder. The image which usually forms in a person’s 
mind when one is mentioned is that of a beehive-shaped 
affair standing in the pond away from the shore, entirely 
surrounded by the water. While this is the common form, 
it is not the only one. There are all gradations from it, 
from that built in the water, with one side against the bank, 
to the one partly in the water and partly in the bank, and 
finally we have the lodge wholly in the bank away from the 
water, sometimes several feet. The latter are called “bank 
lodges,’ while Morgan called the first kind “island lodges.” 
They intergrade so that it is impossible to draw a hard and 
fast line between them (Fig. 26). 
It seems to me that probably the bank lodge was the first 
structure of the sort, and that the island lodge evolved from 
that. Just which variation of the bank lodge was the 
first to appear one can only guess. There are arguments in 
favor of each, and it seems quite probable that ancestors of 
our present day beavers may have begun building lodges of 
the different types in separate localities, and independently 
of one another, and that the habit gradually spread to all 
the beavers, with the consequent adoption of all the varia- 
tions. Not all beavers build houses. Some never do, but 
live in burrows in the banks of streams and lakes. Of these 
burrows more will be said later. Others may sometimes live 
in lodges, and at other times in burrows, according to cir- 
cumstances, and as a matter of fact, I doubt if, even when 
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