Ms,; VERTEBRATA. 



north of Europe, by which — though the account is no doubt exaggerated — it appears that in their 

 chief peculiarity they there display the same instincts as their American congeners: 



,4 The beaver is instinctively led to build his house near the hanks of lakes and rivers. He 

 saws w i 1 1 1 his teeth hirch-t rees, with which the building is constructed; with his teeth lie drags 

 the w 1 along to the place destined for building his habitation; in this manner one piece of tim- 

 ber is carried after another where they choose. At the lake or river, where their house is to be 

 built, they lay Kirch-stocks or trunks, covered with their hark, in the bottom itself, and forminga 

 foundation, they complete the rest of the building with so much art and ingenuity as to excite 

 the admiration of the beholders. The house itself is of a round and arched figure, equaling in its 

 circumference the ordinary hut of a Laplander. In this house the floor is for abed, covered with 

 branches of trees, nol in the very bottom, hut a little above, near the edge of a river or lake; so 

 that, between the foundation and flooring, on which the dwelling is supported, there is formed, as 

 it. were, a cell, tilled with water, in which the stalks of the birch-tree are put up; on the hark of 

 this, the beaver family who inhabit this mansion feed. If there are more families under one roof, 

 besides the laid flooring, another, resembling the former, is built a little above, which you may 

 not improperly name a second story in the building. The roof of the dwelling consists of branches 

 verv closeh compacted, and projects out far over the water. You have now, reader, a house con- 

 sisting and laid out in a cellar, a flooring, a hypocaust, a ceiling, and a roof, raised by a brute an- 

 imal, altogether destitute of reason, and also of the builder's art, with no less ingenuity than com- 

 modiousness." 



In confirmation of the preceding description — or at least in evidence of the building propensity 

 ■ >f the European heaver — we copy the following anecdote, related by Geoffroy St. Hilaire: "One 

 of these heavers from the Rhone was confined in the Paris menagerie. Fresh branches were reg- 

 cilarly put into his cage, together with his food, consisting of vegetables, fruits, <fcc, to amuse him 

 during the night, and minister to his gnawing propensity. He had only litter to shield him from 

 the frost, and the door of his cage closed badly. One bitter winter-night it snowed, and the snow 

 had collected in one corner. These were all his materials, and the poor beaver disposed of them 

 to secure himself from the nipping air. The branches he interwove between the bars of his cage, 

 precisely as a basket-maker would have done. In the intervals he placed his litter, his carrots, 

 his apples, his all, fashioning each with his teeth so as to fit them to the spaces to be filled. To 

 -toj, the interstices he covered the whole with snow, which froze in the night, and in the morning 

 it was found that he had thus built a wall which occupied two-thirds of the doorway." 



While the beaver has thus been exterminated in Europe, except that a few linger along the 

 borders of the rivers in the more thinly settled portions, and somewhat greater numbers exist in 

 the forests of the north, in North America a similar process has been going on. Where, half a 

 century ago, a hunter or trapper could kill four hundred in a year, they are already scarce, and 

 are only to he found in sufficient numbers to make the pursuit a profession in the distant solitudes 

 of the northwest. It was formerly spread over the whole of North America, and as appears, was 

 so plentiful even in what constitutes the present State of New York, that two centuries ago, from 

 eight to ten thousand skins were annually taken. The trade in heaver-skins was, indeed, om 

 the leading inducements to the early settlements and migrations of the colonists, English and 

 French. Catesby speaks of it as found in Carolina, and Bartram in Florida; and the nam. 

 Beaver River, Beaver Creek, Beaver bain, all over the country, show the universality of its dis- 

 tribution throughout the whole United States. A few are still found in remote and unsettled 

 part- as far south as Virginia, and thence northward through most of the Middle and Eastern 

 States. In the ( 'ana. las, where it was once so abundant, it is rare, and is only plentiful ill tie 

 \a-t wild- of the northwest— its range extending across the continent, and as high as 68° north 

 latitude — the hunting-grounds of the Indians. Here there are still men who pursue the lif< 

 hunters and trappers, hut while they are exposed to many hardships, and to the dangerous bofi^ 

 tility <>r fatal caprice of the Indians, they rarely obtain a compensation, and never a fortune 

 Formerly, a skillful trapper obtained eighty beavers in the autumn, sixty in the spring, and thre< 

 hundred in the sumim r, hut less than half that number is now the usual fruit of a season's labor. 

 The Indian- are the chief pursuer- of this, as well as the other fur-bearing animals of the North 



