270 NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE EEAVEE. 



IN all countries, as man is civilized and improved, 

 the lower ranks of animals are depressed and degrad- 

 ed. Either reduced to servitude, or treated as rebels, 

 all their societies are dissolved, and all their united 

 talents rendered ineffectual. Their feeble arts quick- 

 ly disappear ; and nothing remains but their solitary 

 instincts, or those foreign habitudes which they re- 

 ceive from human education. 



The beaver seems to be now the only remaining 

 monument of that kind of intelligence in brutes, which 

 though infinitely inferior, as to its principle, to that of 

 man, supposes, however, certain common projects, has 

 certain relative ends in view. Projects which having 

 society for their basis, suppose some particular method 

 of understanding one another, and of acting in concert. 



It is allowed, that the beaver, far from having an 

 absolufe superiority over the other animals, seems, on 

 the contrary, to be inferior to some of them. This 

 fact I have an opportunity to confirm, having, for 

 near a twelve-month past, had a young beaver in my 

 possession, which was sent to me from Canada in the 

 beginning of the year 1758. It is an animal tolerably 



