50 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



I found myself at a loss for a way of crossing a 

 stream until the fortunate discovery of a beaver 

 dam has enabled me to avoid a w^etting. 



Having now seen something of the dams, so that 

 without going into a lot of tiresome and unneces- 

 sary detail such as exact measurements of numerous 

 structures (which must vary continually), the reader 

 has at least a general idea of what they are Hke 

 without, 1 hope, being too much bored. We have 

 seen that the dams range in length from a few 

 inches to two thousand feet or more, and in height 

 up to fourteen feet, containing from a pound or two 

 of building material up to several hundred tons, all 

 carried laboriously by the industrious builders in 

 their tiny hands or with their powerful teeth. Also 

 that the idea of this stupendous work is to enable 

 the animals to keep water at a constant level for the 

 protection of their lodge and to furnish them with 

 a convenient means of transporting their supply of 

 wood. This brings us naturally to their wood-cut- 

 ting operations, about which many wonderful tales 

 have been told. Before going into the methods, it 

 might be well to give the reason for woodcutting 

 even at the risk of slight repetition. Beavers' 

 natural food consists of a purely vegetable diet, the 

 chief item being the barli of trees, not the outside 

 shell, but the cambium layer which contains the 

 very life oTtEe tree. To a limited extent they also 

 use the wood itself, but the nutriment obtained 

 from it is so insignificant that it is only occasionally 



