72 WAITING IN THE WILDERNESS 



Diver's food was bark usually aspen al- 

 though he frequently ate that of willow, birch, 

 or alder. In each case he cut a small twig and 

 from this ate the bark and sometimes a small 

 bit of the wood. Occasionally he took a mouth- 

 ful of grass, ate a mushroom, dug out a root, and 

 sometimes nibbled at the pond lilies in the water. 

 A number of times I persuaded him to examine a 

 small pine. Each time he turned up his nose 

 and sniffed as though he disliked the pungent 

 odour. I could not get him to gnaw pine, spruce, 

 or fir trees. 



In cutting, Diver used his four front teeth. 

 These were as thin as one's fingernail and had 

 very sharp edges. I never succeeded in count- 

 ing just how many teeth Diver had, because he 

 ever objected to my examining his mouth, but 

 a full-grown beaver has twenty teeth. The 

 teeth of a young beaver are almost white, but 

 those of an old beaver are almost orange, appar- 

 ently stained by the acid from the aspens and 

 willows which they have cut. 



Diver was so young when the trapper cap- 

 tured him that he could hardly have remembered 

 seeing his kind. The first beavers he saw were 

 in a pond perhaps thirty feet from us. He stood 

 still and looked at them for several seconds with 

 an almost expressionless face. Then he went to 

 them at his usual pace and had a visit. 



