DWELLINGS 1639 



But it is, above all, the beaver (Castor fibre) who 

 exhibits the highest qualities as an engineer and 

 mason. This industrious and sagacious rodent is well 

 adapted to inconvenience the partisans of instinct as 

 an entity, apart from intelligence, which renders 

 animals similar to machines and impels them to 

 effect associated acts, without themselves being able 

 to understand them, and with a fatality and determi- 

 nation from which they can under no circumstance 

 escape. 



The civilization of the beaver has perished in the 

 presence of man's civilization, or rather of his per- 

 secution. In regions where it is tracked and dis- 

 turbed by man the beaver lives in couples, and is con- 

 tent to hollow out a burrow like the otter's, instead 

 of showing its consummate art. It merely vegetates, 

 fleeing from enemies who are too strong for it, and 

 depriving itself of a dangerous comfort. But when 

 the security of solitude permits these animals to 

 unite in societies, and to possess, without too much 

 fear, a pond or a stream, they then exhibit all their 

 industry. 



They build very well arranged dwellings, al- 

 though at first sight they look like mere piles of 

 twigs, branches, and logs heaped in disorder on a 

 small dome of mud. At the edge of a pond each 

 raises his own lodge, and there is no work by the 

 colony in common. If, however, there is a question 

 of inhabiting the bank of a shallow stream, certain 

 preliminary works become necessary. The rodents 

 establish a dam, so that they may possess a large 

 sheet of water which may be of fair depth, and above 



p IV. 



