360 TEE TRAPPER. 



formed gives them a greater extent of feeding ground, 

 and enables them to haul wood up stream. Sometimes 

 beavers, driven away by a feeling of insecurity or some 

 other cause, will leave a new house and take up their 

 abode in an old shanty, returning to their deserted abode 

 every night for provisions. 



The materials used for building the dams are the same 

 as for the houses. I have never seen the beaver actually 

 at work at the building. I do not think they build in 

 the daytime. The sticks they use vary in size from the 

 thickness of a man's finger to that of his leg, and in length 

 from 1 foot up to 5 or 6. Most of them are peeled previous 

 to being worked up. Dead wood also and stones are used. 

 I have seen the latter as big as a man's head, that must 

 have been carried some little distance. Stones and mud 

 they carry with their fore paws or hands, pressing them 

 against their chest and walking on their hind legs. Some 

 sticks lie horizontally, others in a slanting position, with 

 the branchy end pointing up in the air and the butts 

 down stream, and some short ones are in a perpendicular 

 position. The chief difficulty must be with the founda- 

 tion ; when once that is laid it is comparatively easy to 

 lean boughs against it as I have described, place others 

 crossways, weigh them down with stones and plaster them 

 with mud. Often they take advantage of a windfall, or a 

 little chain of rocks, for they are capital engineers. The 

 slope on the upper side of the dam is much less than on 

 the lower, and the top is accurately levelled. 



I will briefly enumerate their reasons for dam-building. 

 1st. To deepen the water around their camp, enabling 



