170 HABITATIONS OF ANIMALS. 



victuals, they lay up no provisions in their apartments. But 

 when they feel the first approaches of the sleeping season, 

 they shut up both passages to their habitation ; and this opera- 

 tion they perform with such labor and solidity, that it is 

 more easy to dig the earth any where else, than in such parts 

 as they have thus fortified. At this time they are very fat, 

 weighing sometimes twenty pounds. They continue to be 

 plump for three months ; but afterwards they gradually de- 

 cline, and, at the end of winter, they are extremely emaciated. 

 When seized in their retreats, they appear rolled up in the 

 form of a ball, and covered with hay. In this state they are 

 so torpid, that they may be killed without seeming to feel pain. 

 The hunters select the fattest for eating, and keep the young 

 ones for taming. Like the dormice, and all the other animals 

 which sleep during winter, the marmots are revived by a grad- 

 ual and gentle heat; and it is remarkable, that those which 

 are fed in houses, and kept warm, never become torpid, but 

 are equally active and lively during the whole year. 



The Beaver is about three feet in length, and its tail, which 

 is of an oval figure, and covered with scales, is eleven inches 

 long. He uses his tail as a rudder to direct his course in 

 the water. In places much frequented by man, the beavers 

 neither associate nor build habitations. But in the northern 

 regions of both continents, they assemble in the month of 

 June or July, for the purpose of uniting into society, and of 

 building a city. From all quarters they arrive in numbers, 

 and soon form a troop of two or three hundred. The opera- 

 tions and architecture of the beavers are so well described 

 by the Count de Buffon, that we shall lay it before our read- 

 ers nearly in his own words. The place of rendezvous, he 

 remarks, is generally the situation fixed upon for their estab- 

 lishment, and it is always on the banks of waters. If the 

 waters be flat, and seldom rise above their ordinary level, as 

 in lakes, the beavers make no bank or dam. But in rivers or 

 brooks, where the water is subject to risings and fallings, 

 they build a bank, which traverses the river from one side to 

 the other, like a sluice, and is often from eighty to a hundred 

 feet long, by ten or twelve broad at the base. This pile, for 

 animals of so small a size (the largest beavers weighing only 

 fifty or sixty pounds), appears to be enormous, and presup- 

 poses an incredible labor. But the solidity with which the 

 work is constructed, is still more astonishing than its magni- 

 tude. The part of the river where they erect this bank is 

 generally shallow. If they find on the margin a large tree, 



