40 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



doubt that, were it at all necessary to their comfort, 

 other animals would have hit on the same expedients. 

 Beavers have three kinds of roads their ordinary 

 tracks near the water, their canals, and the log-rolling 

 roads. This is quite in accordance with the very 

 high degree of their social development as compared 

 with other animals. Variety of roads is a mark of 

 progress among the beasts as among men. Even 

 in Europe there are many degrees of this exhibition 

 of civilisation, and oddly enough the Dutch, a semi- 

 aquatic race, are the representatives of the beavers 

 among mankind. On the route from the Hague 

 to Scheveningen, for instance, there lie parallel to 

 each other a carriage road, a canal, a bicycle track, 

 a light railway, side-paths regularly constructed, and 

 in places little tracks or " Katz-passen " made by 

 trespassers. 



