54 BUILDING A DAM. 



Tl\e ingenuity witli which he constructs his "home 

 without hands" has long been a favourite subject of 

 eulogy, and has afforded many a text to moralists and 

 philosophers. 



The indispensable condition of the beaver's life, however, 

 is a sufficient supply of water. It is necessary that the 

 stream by which he lives should be one that is always 

 flowing ; and, in order to guard against a failure of this 

 provision, his instinct teaches him to erect a kind of 

 reservoir, by building a dam across the water-course. In 

 this way he contrives to maintain the water always at the 

 same, or nearly the same, level. 



To understand the skill witli which this dam is thrown 

 up, we must watch the little engineer at his patient toil. 



Having fixed upon a tree which he thinks suitable for 

 the purpose, he sits upright, and with those strong and 

 large incisors of his cuts a deep groove completely round 

 its trunk. Then he proceeds to widen the groove in pro- 

 portion to its depth, so that the tree, when this portion of 

 his labour has been completed, closely resembles the narrow 

 or contracted portion of an hour-glass. Next, he examines 

 it with a careful eye, and views it on every side, as if to 

 determine in what direction it should be laid low. Having 

 settled this point, he takes up his position on the contrary 

 or other side, and Avith two or three powerful bites cuts 

 through the nearly severed trunk, which comes to the 

 ground with a crash. 



The beaver's next procedure is to cut it up into three- 

 feet lengths, or thereabouts ; and these logs, rounded and 

 pointed, he builds up into a dam, by laying them hori- 



