372 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



for food; but the smaller limbs, the bark of which is 

 tender and nutritious, afford the aliment which they pre- 

 fer.' To obtain this food, the animals, as is well known, 

 fell the trees by gnawing a ring round their base. Two 

 or three nights' successive work by a pair of beavers is 

 enough to bring down a half-grown tree, * each family 

 being left to the undisturbed enjoyment of the fruits of 

 their own toil and industry.' ' When the tree begins to 

 crackle they desist from cutting, which they afterwards 

 continue with caution until it begins to fall, when they 

 plunge into the pond usually, and wait concealed for a 

 time, as if fearful that the cracking noise of the tree-fall 

 might attract some enemy to the place.' It is of much 

 interest that the beavers when thus felling trees know how 

 to regulate the direction of the fall ; by gnawing chiefly 

 on the side of the trunk remote from the water, they make 

 the tree fall towards the water, with the obvious purpose 

 of saving as much as possible the labour of subsequent 

 transport. For as soon as a tree is down, the next work 

 is to cut off the branches, or such as are from two to six 

 inches in diameter ; and then, when they have been cleared 

 of their twigs, to divide them into lengths sufficient to ad- 

 mit of the beavers transporting them to their lodges. The 

 cutting into lengths is effected by making a number of 

 semi-sections through the branch at more or less equal 

 distances as it lies upon the ground, and then turning the 

 branch half round and continuing the sections from the 

 opposite side. ' To cut it (the branch) entirely through 

 from the upper side would require an incision of such 

 width .as to involve a loss of labour.' The thicker the 

 branch, the closer together are the sections made, and con- 

 sequently the shorter are the resulting portions — the 

 reason, of course, being that the strength of the animal 

 would not be sufficient to transport a thick piece of timber 

 of the same length as a thin piece which it is only just 

 able to manage. 



In moving cuttings of this description they are quite in- 

 genious. They shove and roll them with their hips, using also 

 their legs and tails as levers, moving sideways in the act. In 

 this way they move the larger pieces from the more or less 



