56 BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 
feet higher than in winters that they expect a heavy 
snow fall inthe earlier part. Long cold winters can be 
forecasted by an intelligent observer of beavers ways 
by noting an extra large feed bed, and the extreme care 
that they use in replastering their houses, the work on 
the latter being usually completed by the first days of 
October. 
A careless iindifference to house plastering and an 
apparent apathy in their feed bed work and its small 
size in comparison with other years,—if the family has 
not been lessened by death or the destructive trap— 
prognosticates a mild winter, and that forecast is an ex- 
ceptional one in which the beaver astrologers register a 
mistake. 
