BEAVERS---T HEIR WAYS. 
CHAPTER I. 
Tare AmEerIcAN BEAvVER—T'HEIR DeEscrRIPTION AND 
Hasits as Toup By Caprain JONATHAN Car- 
VER Over OnE Hunprep Years Ago. 
HE American beaver the Castor Canidensis, of the 
family Castoride, as classified by the naturalist 
and zoologist to distinguish them from the European or 
Asiatic variety, have characteristics at variance but 
undoubtedly the graduating changes were made by 
their environment. This Canidensis variety to which 
these pages will be devoted, once dwelt in great num- 
bers in every brook, creek, lake and river on the North 
American continent as noted by the discoverers of the 
Columbian epoch and their progenitors and successors 
in the conquest and acclimation of this vast continental 
domain. The prehistoric Mound Builders have left earth 
monuments of effigies or totems to commemorate the 
beaver that have stood the test of centuries, and nearly 
every tribe or nation of the red Indian have some le- 
gend in which their association with this intelligent ro- 
dent has been deified or placed in an honored and con- 
spicuous: position in the lodge of mysteries or rites 
of the medicine men of the various Indian tribes. Ban- 
croft the historian in his article on the Indian at the time 
of the discovery of America says that in cleanliness, 
thrift, industry and architectural skill the beaver was the 
superior of the red man. 
