BEAVEK. 



It has been supposed that the animal uses its tail as a trowel in 

 ^building these habitations. It appears, however, that this is an 



Fig. 22. The Beaver. 



error, and that they use only their teeth and the paws of their 

 fore-feet. They use their incisive teeth to cut the branches, and 

 when necessary the trunks of trees ; and it is with their mouth and 

 their fore-feet that they drag these materials to the place where 

 they intend to erect their habitation. When they have the 

 -advantage of running water, they take care to cut their wood at a 

 point on the banks of the stream above the place where they are 

 about to build. They then push the materials into the water, 

 following and guiding them as they float down the stream, and 

 landing them, in fine, at the point selected for their village. It 

 is also with their feet that they excavate the foundations of their 

 dwellings. These labours are executed with great rapidity and 

 chiefly during the night. 



84. The beaver, being a mammifer of the order of rodents, is one 

 of the classes to which Cuvier assigns, as has been already stated, 

 the lowest degree of intelligence. If the various acts here related 

 were assigned to intelligence, they would evince a high degree of 

 that faculty. Cuvier, however, demonstrated conclusively that 

 they were acts altogether instinctive. He took several young 

 beavers from their dams, and reared them altogether apart from 

 their species, so that they had no means of acquiring any know- 

 ledge of the habits and manners of their kind. These animals, 

 brought up in cages, isolated and solitary, where they had no 

 natural necessity for building huts, nevertheless, pushed by the 

 blind and mechanical force of instinct, availed themselves of 

 materials, supplied to them for the purpose, to build huts. 



151 



