beaver colony. The ways of the two colonies were 

 in some things very different. In the Spruce Tree 

 Colony the custom was to move the felled aspen 

 promptly to the harvest pile. In the Island Col- 

 ony the custom was to cut down most of the 

 harvest before transporting any of it to the pile 

 beside the house. Of the one hundred and sixty- 

 two trees that had been felled for this harvest, 

 one hundred and twenty-seven were still lying 

 where they fell. However, the work of transport- 

 ing was getting under way ; a few logs were in 

 the pile beside the house, and numerous others 

 were scattered along the canals, runways, and 

 slides between the house and the harvest grove. 

 There was more wasted labor, too, in the 

 Island Colony. This was noticeable in the at- 

 tempts that had been made to fell limb-entangled 

 trees that could not fall. One five-inch aspen had 

 three times been cut off at the bottom. The third 

 cut was more than three feet from the ground, 

 and was made by a beaver working from the top 

 of a fallen log. Still this high-cut aspen refused 

 to come down and there it hung like a collapsed 

 balloon entangled in tree-tops. 



93 



