A LITTLE BEAVER 



WHEN you first see the beaver you are likely to 

 feel that you already have some slight acquaintance 

 with him, and then, searching your memory, you 

 will probably find you have been thinking of the 

 muskrat. Indeed, the animals have many points 

 of resemblance, and except that the muskrat's 

 tail is narrower, and longer hi proportion, he is 

 an excellent miniature portrait of his bigger and 

 more valuable cousin, the beaver. 



The hirsute face of the muskrat, grim with its 

 small, deep-set eyes and grinning incisors, his 

 long, brown, shining fur and soft under-coat of 

 drab, his scaly shanks and webbed feet, his whole 

 rounded clumsy form make a faithful reproduction 

 in small of the larger animal. On land both have 

 the same awkward, waddling gait; in the more con- 

 genial element both swim with the same rapid, 

 even stroke, and dive with equal startling, light- 

 ning-like rapidity. The muskrat builds for a sea- 

 son's use a neat and comfortable house, but it pro- 

 vides no entrance, such as there is in the beaver's 

 domicile, for the carrying in and out of food. The 

 muskrat does not, like the beaver, lay up a store of 

 winter food, but lives from paw to mouth. How- 

 ever, like the beaver's lodge, the muskrat's house 



