44 THE TRAPPER'S ART. 



May, and they have from two to four young ones at a birth. 

 The young remain with their parents for three years. In the 

 fourth year they start a new colony, and commence breeding, 

 the pai-ents assisting in buikling the new dam. This is prob- 

 ably the reason why so many dams are built one above an- 

 other on the same stream. Several can fi-equently be seen 

 from a single point, and they are generally so arranged that 

 the water from one dam sets back to the next above. 



The houses of the Beaver are built of the same materials 

 as their dams. They are proportioned in size to the number 

 of their inhabitants, which seldom exceed four old and six or 

 eicht young ones, though more than double that number have 

 sometimes been found. Hearne, in his narrative of explora- 

 tions in the Hudson's Bay country nearly a hundred years 

 aco, relates an instance where the Indians of his party killed 

 twelve old Beaver and twenty-five young and half-grown ones 

 out of one house ; and it was found, on examination, that 

 several others had escaped. This house, however, was a very 

 large one, and had near a dozen apartments under one roof, 

 which, with two or three exceptions, had no communication 

 with each other, except by water, and were probably occupied 

 by separate families. In the spring. Beavers leave their 

 houses, and roam about during the summer. On their return 

 in the autumn, they repair their habitations for winter use. 

 This is done by covering the outside with fresh mud. This 

 operation is not finished until the frost has become pretty se- 

 vere, as by this means the surface soon freezes as hard as 

 stone, and prevents their great enemy, the wolverene, from 

 disturbing them during the w^inter. 



The food of the Beaver, beside the bark of the several kinds 

 of trees I have mentioned, consists chiefly, in winter, of a 

 large kind of root, somewhat resembling a cabbage-stalk, that 

 grows at the bottom of lakes and rivers. In summer, they 

 vary their diet by eating various kinds of herbage, and such 

 berries as grow near their haunts. 



Beavers are found in the northern parts of America, Europe, 

 and Asia. They are generally supposed to belong to one spe- 

 cies. They are most abundant on this Continent. Within a 



