124 THE DRAMA OF THE FORESTS 



head. Thus they secured four large ones, but left a number 

 of smaller ones unharmed, as Oo-koo-hoo never made a practice 

 of taking a whole family. 



In that house the portion of the chamber used for sleeping 

 quarters was covered with a thick mattress of dry "snake- 

 grass," and the whole interior was remarkably clean. After 

 blocking and patching up the hole and covering the place with 

 snow, the hunters threw water over it until it froze into a solid 

 mass, then they removed the stakes from the runways and 

 left the rest of the beavers in peace. Loading their catch upon 

 their toboggans, all set out for home. 



BEAVER DAMS AND CANALS 



Besides erecting their remarkably strong houses there are 

 two other ways in which the beavers display wonderful skill : 

 in the building of their dams and in the excavating of their 

 canals. Their dams are built for the purpose of retarding, rais- 

 ing, and storing water, in order — in summer time— to circum- 

 vent their enemies by placing a well-watered moat between 

 their foe and their castle; also to flood a wider area so that 

 the far-reaching waters of their pond may lap close to the roots 

 of many otherwise inaccessible trees and thus enable them to 

 fell and float them to their lodge; and — in winter time — to raise 

 the water high enough to secure their pond from freezing solid 

 and imprisoning them in their lodges where they would starve 

 to death, or if they gnawed their way to freedom, the intense 

 cold of mid-winter would freeze their hairless tails and cause 

 their death; furthermore, should they escape from the weather, 

 they would be at the mercy of all their enemies and would not 

 long survive. 



A dam, in the beginning, is usually erected in a small way, 

 just to raise and expand the waters of some small creek or even 

 those of a spring; then, as the yearsgo by, it isconstantly added 



