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LAKES AND STREAMS 



forest Heinrichswalde these animals were hardly less numerous than on the banks 

 of the Elbe, farther west. In some parts of the river beavers increased up to 

 1893, in others they diminished, but since then they have settled and increased on 

 the Mulde. Beavers, of course, are obliged to change their residences when they 

 have used up all the trees required for their food, or when willow-groves and 

 woods have been changed into meadows or dams. A veiy old beaver-settlement 

 on the Nuthe disappeared, for instance, in 1890, because the wood by which 



BEAVERS AT WORK. 



it was protected was made into a meadow: and long inhabited haunts in the 

 Worlitz and Dessau district wviv abandoned because the levelling of the banks 

 by dams made it too difficult for the animals to build again. Sometimes beavers 

 are compelled by floods to move elsewhere ; this being the case on the flat and 

 sandy shores of the Mulde, where every flood drives them out and obliges them to 

 save themselves on willows, heaps of dry twigs, or other artificial or natural 

 elevations. After the flood they return and generally find their home in ruins, 

 the entrance broken, and the ground in such a state that they are compelled to 



