BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. — 13 
place where plenty of provisions and all necessaries are 
to be found. Their houses are always situated in the 
water, and when they can find neither lake nor pond 
adjacent, they endeavour to supply the defect by stop- 
ping the currentof some brook or small river, by means 
of acausewayordam. For this purpose they set about 
felling of trees, and they take care to choose out those 
that grow above the place where they intend to build, 
that they may swim down with the current. Having 
fixed on those that are proper, three or four beavers 
placing themselves round alarge one, find means with 
their strong teeth to bring it down. They also prudent- 
ly contrive that it shall fall towards the water, that they 
may have the less way to carry it. 
After they.have, by a continuance of the same labor 
and industry, cut it into proper lengths, they roll these 
into the water, and navigate them towards the place 
where they are to be employed. Without entering 
more minutely into the measures they pursue in the con- 
struction oftheir dams, I shall only remark, that hav- 
ing prepared a kind of mortar with their feet, and laid 
it on with their tails, which they had before made use of 
to transport it to the place where it is requisite, they 
construct them with as much solidity and regularity as 
the most experienced workmen could do. 
The formation of their cabins is no less amazing. 
These are either builton poles in the middle of the 
small lakes they have thus formed, on the bank of a 
river, or at the extremity of some point of land that ad- 
vances into a lake. Their figure is round or oval, 
and they are fashioned with an ingenuity equal to 
their dams. Two thirds of the edifice stands above the 
