jfrienb 



ONE bright autumn afternoon I peered down 

 into a little meadow by a beaver pond. 

 This meadow was grass-covered and free from 

 willows. In it seven or eight beaver were at work 

 along a new canal. Each kept his place and ap- 

 peared to have a section in which he did his dig- 

 ging. For more than half an hour I watched 

 them clawing out the earth and grass-roots and 

 lifting it out in double handfuls and piling it in 

 an orderly line along the canal -bank. While I 

 was watching a worker at one end of this line, 

 two others clinched in a fight. The fighters made 

 no sound except a subdued guttural mumbling 

 as they rolled about in a struggle. The other 

 workers, to my astonishment, paid not the slightest 

 attention to this fight, but each attended to his 

 own affairs. After two or three minutes the bel- 

 ligerents broke away ; one squatted down breath- 

 ing heavily, while the other, with bloody tail, 

 dragged himself off and plunged into the pond. 

 19 



