72 THE BEAVER 
Frequently, if not always, lodges have smooth slides or 
trails from their tops down to the water. They have the 
appearance of being used for sliding only, as they are smooth 
mud and lacking in footmarks or other indications that the 
animals have climbed up them. Presumably the beavers 
make the ascent elsewhere on the house and descend over 
the slides, a speedy way of getting down if an enemy appears. 
Perhaps they do it just for fun, as an otter does on its 
slides. 
Lodges naturally vary much in size. Some are small. I 
have seen one only six feet in diameter, while others very 
much larger exist. In 1921 a lodge on Tower Creek was 
21 by 24 feet, and 7 feet 3 inches above water level. In 
1923 the same lodge was found to be 333 by 39 feet at the 
water level, the largest of which I have any record. It 
was then 6} feet high. Possibly the top may have settled, 
but I think the water level in the pond had been raised. 
The house had five entrances in 1921. Dugmore mentions 
one in Newfoundland which was 37 feet in its greatest di- 
ameter, and Johnson gives a picture of one in the Adiron- 
dacks 35 feet in its greatest diameter and 28 feet in the short- 
est, and 7 feet high. A house in Gunnison County, 
Colorado, was of an oval shape, 17 by 22 feet on the ground, 
and 12 feet along the ridge on top. 
The number of inhabitants to a lodge of course varies; 
the normal beaver family consists of two adults, the young 
of the year, and the young of the preceding year, or kits and 
yearlings, as we may call them. Morgan says the Lake 
Superior trappers estimated seven to. the lodge, and the 
Rocky Mountain trappers eight; this was in the middle of 
the eighteen sixties. Johnson based his estimate of the 
number of Adirondack beavers on ten to the lodge. I 
noted eight living in one lodge in Yellowstone Park. 
The bedding material may be either grass or shredded 
