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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



in the group, grass and willows often 

 take root and convert the dam into a 

 wooded island. The dams, which serve 

 to protect the houses by surrounding 

 them with water, are chiefly for pur- 

 poses of transportation and enable the 

 animals to bring to their houses the 

 branches whose bark serves as food. 

 Mills styles the beaver " the original 

 conservationist" and calls attention to 

 the part he and his dams have played 

 in agriculture by converting streams 

 into marshes and subsequently into 

 broad flat meadows. Here the palje- 

 ontologist should join the farmer in a 

 vote of thanks, for some of the best 

 preserved skeletons of mastodons (like 

 that in the Museum of the Brooklyn 

 Institute of Arts and Sciences) have been 



found imbedded in the mud of old-time 

 beaver ponds. 



The remarkable things that beavers 

 actually do in nature are nothing to what 

 they do in books, and just as children 

 say the brightest things their parents 

 can think of, so an animal's natural 

 intelligence (or that which seems to be 

 intelligence) loses nothing in the telling, 

 and some marvelous tales have been 

 told of the beaver. The account of 

 Le Beau might well excite the admira- 

 tion and envy of some of our more 

 modern writers. The company of 

 beavers uniting to fell the large tree is 

 a brilliant flight of fancy wherein the 

 writer has been ably seconded by the 

 artist. 



The most widespread fallacy, and the 



Black ash cut by bsavers near Port Kent, New York. Gift of \V. H. Howell. The cuttings show 

 characteristic marks of the beaver's teeth 



