108 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



the joints of his caudal appurtenance admit of only 

 slight sidelong wigglings and a forward sweep between 

 his hind legs, as if he might use it as a tray for food 

 while he sat back spooning up mouthfuls with his fore 

 paws. 



Having found the wattled homes of the beaver, the 

 trapper may proceed in different ways. He may, after 

 the fashion of the Indian hunter, stake the stream 

 across above the dam, cut away the obstruction lower 

 ing the water, break the conical crowns of the houses 

 on the south side, which is thinnest, and slaughter the 

 beavers indiscriminately as they rush out. But such 

 hunting kills the goose that lays the golden egg; and 

 explains why it was necessary to prohibit the killing 

 of beaver for some years. In the confusion of a wild 

 scramble to escape and a blind clubbing of heads there 

 was bootless destruction. Old and young, poor and in 

 prime, suffered the same fate. The house had been 

 destroyed; and if one beaver chanced to escape into 

 some of the bank-holes under water or up the side 

 channels, he could be depended upon to warn all beaver 

 from that country. Only the degenerate white man 

 practises bad hunting. 



The skilled hunter has other methods. 



If unstripped saplings be yet about the bank of 

 the stream, the beavers have not finished laying up 

 their winter stores in adjacent pools. The trapper gets 

 one of his steel-traps. Attaching the ring of this to a 

 loose trunk heavy enough to hold the beaver down and 

 drown him, he places the trap a few inches under water 

 at the end of a runway or in one of the channels. He 

 then takes out a bottle of castoreum. This is a sub 

 stance from the glands of a beaver which destroys all 



