NINTH DAY.] CBANIOLOGY. 267 



same purpose; and though I have known distin- 

 guished men, who have been in the habit of using 

 knives for cutting furniture with a sort of nervous 

 restlessness of hand, I do not recollect to have heard 

 of the teeth being employed in the same way ; and I 

 think it would be quite as correct to find the 

 architectural or constructive organ in the opposite 

 part of the body the tail, as the beaver makes a more 

 ingenious use of this part than even of his mouth.* 

 Pray, have you ever observed, Poietes, any particular 

 protuberance in the nether parts of any of our 

 distinguished architects ? 



POIET. I am not a craniologist ; but I would 

 have the doctrine overturned by facts, and not by 

 ridicule; and I have certainly seen some remarkable 

 instances, which were favourable to the system. 



HAL My experience is entirely on the opposite 



[* According to the popular idea, which by Hearne has been 

 shown to be erroneous. In his work, "A Journey to the Northern 

 Ocean," published in 1795, a full, and, I believe the first, accurate 

 account is given of the habits of this intelligent and interesting 

 animal. At the same time that he sweeps away the fictions of its 

 romantic history, he describes particulars not less marvellous, as to the 

 manner of its constructing its dwelling-places, with their entrances 

 under water, and their dams on the equalising principle of mill-dams, 

 to secure that these should be always under "water. It is not the 

 tail structurally unfit that the beaver employs in its works, 

 "displaying a degree of sagacity and foresight of approaching evils 

 little inferior to that of the human species," but its teeth and 

 paws. J. D.] 



