The Home of t/ie Wolverene and Beaver. y^ 



We now come to a curious phase of beaver life. 

 It seems that amongst their number there are some 

 too lazy and idle to work, to build lodges, repair 

 dams, or in fact, to perform any of the duties of a 

 well-conditioned and industrious member of the 

 community. These scapegraces are very summarily 

 dealt with by their virtuous brethren, who first of all 

 give them a good worrying, cutting off a portion of 

 their tails and otherwise maltreating them, and then 

 turn them out neck and crop into the world to reap 

 the fruits of their improvidence. These wretched 

 outcasts— called Paresseux by the trappers — herd 

 together in gangs of half a dozen or so, and never 

 form a dam, but content themselves with digging a 

 hole from the water which runs obliquely upwards 

 and emerges some twenty or thirty feet from the 

 brink. By this passage the improvident ones sally 

 forth when they are in want of food, and return with 

 a length of wood, whosebark they gnaw off in their 

 soiiterrain. But destruction comes quickly on the 

 heads of the wretched paresseux ; either the trapper 

 or the wolverene find out their passage, and make 

 short work of the whole fraternity one after the 

 other, from which just retribution a very pretty 

 little moral could be deduced, if necessary. Before, 

 however, utterly condemning these lazy beavers, let 

 ^s remember that perhaps after all their only sin 



