CHAPTER XIII 
Tuines THat A BEAVER Dorts Not Do 
The beaver has been credited with—or shall I say accused 
of?—doing many preposterous things, and other things 
which, while not preposterous, it would be rather foolish 
to believe. All sorts of queer stories have been told about 
the animal, some without anything in the way of a reason 
for their being. 
It is a popular notion that a beaver works all the time. 
No such thing. He is too wise to do anything so foolish. 
He works when he has to, and works hard then. But he 
likes to loaf and play, and I suspect spends a lot of time doing 
so. Perhaps this goes to show his intelligence. 
The tail is not used as a trowel, to drive stakes with, or as 
a sled to carry mud or other materials upon. 
He is not a weather prophet, he can not foretell whether 
or not next winter will be a hard one. 
He does not suck the air from wood in order to make it 
sink. Anyone who would take the trouble to observe the 
size of a beaver’s mouth would at once see how ridiculous 
such a notion is. 
He does not fell trees across a stream in order to construct 
dams against them. Ina certain book for young folks about 
the beaver, one chapter has an entertaining account of how 
a pair of young beavers started out to make a home for 
themselves. How they traveled up the stream looking for 
a place where a dam could be built and a pond formed, is 
graphically told. At last they came to a place which suited 
the bridgegroom, who apparently was the more experienced 
of the couple. He first felled a tree on one bank so that it 
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