144 ROMANCE OF THE BEAVER 



luxuriant, smooth and beautiful, a visible result of 

 the beavers' industry and the super-human direction 

 of the power which controls all material things, and 

 produces the greatest results from the smallest and 

 most insignificant beginnings. How many acres of 

 the finest meadow land and richest valleys are the 

 result of beavers' work no one dare say. But 

 throughout North America it is fairly safe to say 

 that many hundreds of thousands, or even millions 

 of acres, of the finest cultivated land owe their 

 existence to the beaver. Of course in most places 

 all trace of the origin of these bottom lands is lost, 

 but every once in a while a beaver-cut stump is 

 discovered by those who have to dig down a few 

 feet below the surface, and in some cases these 

 evidences of beaver work have been found fully 

 thirty or forty feet down, where for countless ages 

 they have been preserved by the peat which has 

 formed over them. Agassiz, speaking of the age of 

 beaver work, mentions the building of a mill dam 

 which necessitated some excavating. " This soil 

 was found to be peat bog. A trench was dug into 

 the peat twelve feet wide, by twelve hundred feet 

 long, and nine feet deep ; all the way along this 

 trench old stumps of trees were found at various 

 depths, some still bearing marks of having been 

 gnawed by beaver teeth." By calculating the 

 growth of the bog as about a foot a century there is 

 fairly good evidence that the dam built by the beaver 

 must have existed about one thousand years ago. 



