74 THE BEAVER 
The lodges built against the bank, of either sort, are prob- 
ably also a development of the burrow, originally begun by 
placing sticks in the water before the entrance as a protec- 
tion, and afterwards developing these accumulations into 
houses. Even now one not infrequently sees small piles of 
sticks before the entrances to burrows, and it may have been 
from such as these that bank lodges originated, and later the 
island lodge. Morgan speaks of burrows on the Upper Mis- 
souri as protected by a “false lodge,” evidently just such 
piles of sticks as I have just mentioned. In some cases the 
winter store of food may possibly be placed at the burrows, 
and also the discarded sticks may accumulate there. 
Shiras? speaks of locating a beaver burrow deep within 
a bank by a lake. ‘The next year it broke through the 
surface soil, which was then covered with a mass of sticks.” 
Such occurrences as this might well have been the beginnings 
of bank lodges, at least of the kind in the bank away from 
the water. It seems very likely that where the bank is not 
high enough to permit of the excavation of a chamber suffici- 
ently elevated above the water level, the opening is made 
to the surface and then covered with brush and mud, or 
possibly the covering may be put on first and then the earth 
removed from below. ‘There are many things of this sort 
which we have yet to learn about the beaver. 
An abandoned bank lodge in the Yellowstone Park was 
built over a burrow, beginning close to the old shoreline of 
the pond. It was twelve feet long, six wide, and the highest 
part 53 feet above the bottom. The burrow continued into 
the hill back of the lodge. This consisted of sticks piled 
over the burrow, mixed with the usual mud. The burrow 
must have been widened to make a room, but the affair 
was so old that not much could be learned about it. 
2 Wild Life of Lake Superior, p. 196. 
