Human Physiology. 



because he has sharp teeth, hand-like fore-paws, and a tail like 

 a trowel. These instruments have been formed by the brain 

 and nerves of the animal ; and it is in the brain that reside all 

 the peculiarities of his character, as it is that which directs all 

 his operations. This is not all. The brain is a collection of 

 cells and fibres; matter which cannot act, but can be acted 

 upon and with. The beaver life, beaver mind, beaver soul is 

 back of brain and nerves, and works through them, first tc 

 fashion its body, and then to carry out the functions of its 

 organisation. Head, feet, and tail point to the instincts, facul- 

 ties, the most interior life which fashions and directs all. 



The beaver is a gentle and affectionate as well as intelligent 

 animal and easily tamed. When kept in a house he gathers 

 all the materials around him, and does his best to construct 

 a dam and house. A gentleman in Vermont, in the employ 

 of the Hudson Bay Company, had a pet beaver that accom- 

 panied him in all his expeditions. When going by a river the 

 beaver followed, the boat, swimming, and though often not seen 

 all day, he never failed at night to find his way to his master's 

 feet. The steamers on Lake Champlain, a narrow lake nearly 

 a hundred miles in length, make landings at several ports on 

 either side. If this pet beaver were thrown overboard by day 

 or night, he never failed to stop at the port at which his master 

 had landed, and to find him quickly after. But how the beaver 

 can follow his master by water and know where he had landed, 

 they may tell us who know how the nightingales find their 

 haunts, the salmon their streams, or the bees their hives, and 

 who know much more than I do of life and its mysteries. 



Monkeys are, intellectually, less like men than are dogs, or 

 beavers, or elephants; in some things less like them than are 

 ants or bees. But artists find strange resemblances to humanity 

 in many birds and beasts. The higher classes of the four- 

 handed animals, the chimpanzee and the orang-outang, however, 

 are in some of their external aspects curious caricatures of 



