THE BEAVER. 365 



from a single tooth mark to where it was just ready to 

 drop), I am compelled to admit that beavers have not the 

 smallest idea which way the tree will fall when they com- 

 mence to chop it. 



The speed at which they work is wonderful. In their 

 particular line, viz. dam-building, I would back an equal 

 number of beavers in a given time against men, the latter, 

 of course, to be without tools. On one occasion on the 

 Causapscol (Lower Canada) we cut a breach 6 feet wide 

 in a dam, lowering the level of the water in the beaver 

 pond by more than a foot. The cutting of this breach 

 gave two men with axes over an hour's work. Next day 

 the family of beavers who inhabited it had thoroughly 

 repaired the gap, and the water had risen to its former 

 level. 



The (to my opinion) most extraordinary proof of the 

 intelligence of the beaver has, I think, never been 

 noted by naturalists. It is, that on the approach of a 

 heavy freshet, which instinct teaches them would carry 

 away their dam, they have the foresight to cut a gap in 

 it, which carries off the extra water, and saves their works 

 from being swept away. On several dams that I examined 

 I found one spot weaker and less firmly constructed than 

 the rest. If these are designed as floodgates by the 

 beaver, to be used on emergency, it is, if possible, a more 

 wonderful trait of sagacity than any that have ever been 

 mentioned. 



Beaver, when they cross their dams, always do so at 

 certain places, making little roads, which the trapper 

 takes advantage of. Bears are very fond of beaver, and 

 lay wait for them on these portage roads, which they 



