98 BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 
endum of a Pawnee Indian weather prophet made many 
years ago, printed in a late September number of the 
Leader the forewarnings for a hard winter. How well 
it has been verified, we all now know. The Bismarck 
Tribune at that time made a note of the Leader article, 
saying that ‘‘Editor Taylor of the Washburn Leader 
with twenty-five years experiene in this section, proph- 
esies the coming winter will be a very severe one,” or 
words to that effect. But the credit to Taylor should 
have been but secondary. Merely a prognostical inter- 
pretation of weather-wise beavers’ signs, in their extra- 
ordinary preparation to meet an impending climax. 
On another trip to Douglass river later in the season, 
we were fortunate enough to secure a large male beaver 
alive and brought him to Washburn for winter quarters. 
His place of confinement has been a cheerless and 
cold cellar. Though plenty to eat and drink, intense 
cold has nipped a bit of his trowel tail off. But lately, 
in unerring line of the strange gift—or instinct we may 
call it—of his kind, he has given forth another sign 
that is well to heed. He has commenced to build a 
platform bed—a sure sign as every old beaver trapper 
or student of beaver habits know—will mean an unusual 
raise of flooded waters on streams where beaver were 
or are living. It makes no difference whether the bea- 
ver lives in a cellar or in his house by the frozen stream 
he has unveiled to us the true beaver sign of preparation 
for the coming of unusual spring time floods.”’ 
While having had considerable snow along the Upper 
Missouri River that winter, it melted off gradually so 
that an ice gorge or very high water was not ex- 
