J)tm 



5 OR three hundred years the beaver has been 

 a popular subject for discussion. Fabulous 

 accounts have been given concerning his works, 

 and that which he has done has been exag- 

 gerated beyond recognition. Many of the de- 

 scriptions of him are grotesque, and many ac- 

 counts of his works are uncanny. His tail has 

 been made to do the work of a pile-driver, and 

 some of the old accounts credit him with driv- 

 ing stakes into the ground that were as large as 

 a man's thigh and five or six feet long. Stories 

 have been told that his tail was used as a trowel 

 in plastering the house and the dam. A few 

 writers have stated that he lived in a three-story 

 lodge. More than a century ago Audubon called 

 attention to the enormous mass of fabrications 

 that had been written concerning this animal, 

 and in 1771 Samuel Hearne of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company denounced a beaver nature-faker 

 in the following terms: "The compiler of the 



53 



