260 AUDUBON THE NATURALIST. 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE BEAVER. 



^I^HE sagacity and instinct of the beaver have 

 -*- from time immemorial been the subject of 

 admiration and wonder. The early writers on 

 both continents have represented it as a ra- 

 tional, intelligent, and moral being, requiring 

 but the faculty of speech to raise it almost to 

 an equality, in some respects, with our own 

 species. There is in the composition of every 

 man, whatever may be his pride in his philoso- 

 phy, a proneness in a greater or less degree to 

 superstition, or at least credulity. The world 

 is at best but slow to be enlightened, and the 

 trammels thrown around us by the tales of the 

 nursery are not easily shaken off. Travellers 

 into the northern parts of Europe who wrote 

 marvellous accounts of the habits of the beavers 

 in northern Europe, seem to have worked on 

 the imaginations and confused the intellects of 

 the early explorers of our northern regions. 

 They excited the enthusiasm of Buffon, whose 



