HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS. 415 



never go farther than their provisions and stores; 

 but in summer they wander abroad, and live upon 

 berries, fruits, leaves, c., and though not carnivor- 

 ous, they will from necessity sometimes eat Cray- 

 fish, and such other kinds of fish as they can fall in 

 with. Mr. Hearne,* from a long residence at Hud- 

 son's Bay, in the service of the company, had 

 abundant opportunities of observing the economy 

 of these interesting animals, and from his work we 

 have corrected our former account. 



He contradicts many things said of them by 

 naturalists, but allows they have great sagacity and 

 foresight in building their houses and dams. He 

 says they do not drive stakes into the ground, nor 

 use their large flat tails to carry burthens upon, 

 neither do they use them as a trowel in plastering 

 their houses, or building their dams, both of which 

 are a rude mass of wood and stones. He treats as 

 a fable the accounts given by authors of their 

 assembling in large bodies, for the purpose of 

 conjointly erecting large towns and cities, and 

 commonwealths, and of their finishing their houses 

 in different stories and apartments, in the neat 

 manner ascribed to them. They merely cut off the 

 projecting branches on the inside, and round and 

 make even the habitation within. 



* See Hearne's journey from Prince of Wales's Fort, to the mouth 

 of the Copper Mine River, where it empties itself into the northern 

 ocean. 



