Canadian Beaver 
following generation. Yet they are still objects of the most in- 
tense interest to all who desire to read Nature either at first or 
second hand. 
They are so very like some humble, primitive race of people 
of peaceful disposition and few wants, industrious and practical in 
all their affairs, and apparently depending more upon reason and 
less upon instinct than do the majority of the forest folk. For 
while it is unquestionably true that almost all of the higher wild 
animals must use their reasoning powers to think out the various 
problems of their daily lives, it is equally certain that instinct is 
of even greater importance to them. 
Just as the lone trapper or hunter, if lacking instinct similar to 
theirs, and forced to rely wholly upon reason to wrest a living 
from Nature, would be pretty certain to starve before the winter 
was half gone. 
Everyone knows that it is the beavers’ custom to dam up 
small streams and build their thatched and mud-plastered log 
cabins on the margins of the ponds thus made. But the beavers 
themselves have been so trapped and persecuted as to have been 
fairly driven to the most remote and secluded parts of the wilder- 
ness, with men still hot on their trail, and closing in doggedly 
with murderous determination when with each recurring autumn the 
beaver fur again becomes thick and silky to tempt their greed. 
At present the scattered families of this inoffensive fugitive 
race scarcely dare to raise a lodge of any sort, much less any- 
thing so conspicuous as a dam, and so are compelled to hide 
in secret burrows beneath the bank, like their cousins of the Old 
World, who have suffered from man’s unwelcome presence for so 
much longer a period. 
In most parts of this country beavers are supposed to have 
the protection of the law; but along the hidden rivers, where the 
few survivors lurk, law is little more than a byword, and just 
as long as beaver skins are allowed to be bought and sold, any 
attempt to protect them is bound to prove futile. 
If England and America could agree to make the possession of 
beaver skins illegal anywhere within their boundaries, and punishable 
by a heavy fine or imprisonment, good results would certainly 
*ollow; for the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company would then be obliged 
to refuse to handle beaver skins, and the trappers to leave them 
alone. Even then it would probably be a number of years be- 
146 

