INDEX. 217 



morse, or a whale, and the latter generally proves victo- 

 rious, iii. 391, &c. 



Beasts are most fierce and cruel in all countries where men 

 are most barbarous, ii. 168. 



Beasts of chase, in the reigns of William Rufus, and Henry 

 the First, it was less criminal to destroy one of the human 

 species than a beast of chase ; sacred edifices thrown down, 

 and turned to waste, to make room for beasts of chase, 

 ii. 314-. 



Beasts of prey seldom devour each other ; they chiefly seek 

 after the deer or the goat ; their usual method of hunting, 

 ii. 160. 



Beaver, known to build like an architect, and rule like a citi- 

 zen, ii. 166. Its fore parts taste like flesh, and the hinder 

 like the fish it feeds on, 382. A remaining monument of 

 brutal society ; its qualities, taken from its fellows, and kept 

 in solitude or domestic tameness ; resists only when driven 

 to extremity, and fights when its speed cannot avail ; the 

 only quadruped that has a flat broad tail, covered with 

 scales, and serving as a rudder to direct its motions in the 

 water; the sole quadruped with membranes between the 

 toes on the hind feet and none on the fore feet ; the only 

 animal in its fore parts entirely resembling a quadruped, 

 and in its hinder parts approaches the nature of fishes, hav- 

 ing a scaly tail ; its description ; has but one vent for the 

 emission of excrements and urine ; they assemble about the 

 months of June and July ; make a society, to continue the 

 greatest part of the year ; form a company of above two 

 hundred ; fix their abode by the side of a lake or river ; cut 

 with their teeth a tree thicker than a man's body ; amazing 

 work and mansion houses ; convey their materials by water ; 

 mix clay and dry grass together, work it into a mortar, and 

 with their tails plaster their work within and without; their 

 walls perpendicular, and two feet thick ; their piers four- 

 score or an hundred feet long, and ten or twelve feet thick 

 at the base ; their dikes ten and twelve feet thick at the 

 foundation; their apartments round or oval, and divided 

 into three stories, one above the other ; visited too often by 

 men, they work only in the night-time, or abandon the place, 

 and seek a safer situation ; four hundred reside in one man- 

 sion house, divided into a number of apartments having 

 communication with each other ; their works in the northern 

 parts finished in August or September ; in summer they are 

 epicures ; their provisions for the winter season ; they drive 

 piles into the earth to fence and fortify their habitation 

 against the wind and water ; cut down branches from three 

 to ten feet in length ; the largest are conveyed to the maga- 

 zines by a whole body, the smallest by one only, each tak- 

 ing a different way, and having a walk assigned him, that 



