How Animals Work. 



bank of the stream or lake it happens to frequent, 

 consisting of a chamber with numerous passages, all of 

 which open beneath the surface of the water. Under 

 certain conditions, however, the Musquash departs 

 from this rule, and builds for itself a house of a dome- 

 like shape, composed of sedges and grasses and similar 

 materials all plastered together with mud, and sup- 

 ported upon a mud embankment sufficiently high to 

 raise it well above the water. This house has a single 

 chamber some sixteen inches to two feet in diameter, 

 and is entered by a passage which opens beneath the 

 water. Other passages leading out of this first ex- 

 cavated gallery are sometimes present, all lead down- 

 wards and have their openings below the water, and 

 are said to be made by the animal in its search for the 

 roots of various aquatic plants upon which it feeds. 

 Within this house the Musquash passes the winter, 

 its living room being furnished with a soft bed of leaves 

 and sedges. 



The Beaver was once to be found generally dis- 

 tributed all over the forest regions of the northern 

 parts of the Northern Hemisphere ; it ranged over 

 the whole of Europe, and was an inhabitant of the 

 British Isles down to about the beginning of the eleventh 

 century. (Beverstone in Gloucester and Beverley in 

 Yorkshire are two place names that had their origin 

 in the presence of the Beaver, just as Brockley and 

 Brockenhurst tell of the Broc or Badger.) Now, how- 

 ever, the European Beaver is nearly extinct; and a 

 similar fate presses hard upon its American brother, 

 so mercilessly and unceasingly has it been hunted 

 down and slaughtered for its beautiful coat. The 



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