150 ON THE FRONTIER. 



secured in these subterranean dwellings I do not know, for 

 I have never found any outlet opening from them to the 

 air, nor do I think their architects make any, as to do so 

 would, in countries infested with predatory vermin, be 

 opening a door to enemies, while by having the only en- 

 trances to them under water they are quite safe. These 

 houses are each inhabited by only one pair of beavers, and, 

 when they have a family, their two pairs of young ones, 

 which, when old enough to breed, are driven out by their 

 parents, who, however, assist each pair of young beavers to 

 make a new house for themselves. 



Curious, that the brute whose reasoning powers are 

 nearest to those of civilised man, who is both a good 

 theoretical and practical engineer, who cuts down trees 

 larger in proportion to his size than the greatest forest 

 mammoths are to us choosing them with great judgment, 

 felling them to the exact spot required ; building dams 

 capable of resisting mountain-torrents, constructing dwel- 

 lings showing some knowledge of hydrostatics, and not 

 doing all these things invariably and always alike, as if in- 

 stinctively only, but changing and adapting his ways and 

 modes of proceeding according to the circumstances of each 

 particular case curious, I repeat, that the course of con- 

 tinuation of species such animals follow, ab initio ad 

 infinitum, is the very one we are taught to consider the 

 surest to induce mental and physical degeneracy, Here is 

 a stubborn fact for our learned "physicists." 



During the autumn the beavers are busy laying in the 

 supply of food that is to last them all winter. It consists 

 of the tops of withes, small twigs of osiers, and the inner 



