APPENDIX. 227 



Their food chiefly consists of a large root, something resembling 

 a cabbage stalk, which grows at the bottom of the lakes and rivers. 

 They eat also the bark of trees, particularly that of the poplar, birch, 

 aud willow ; but the ice preventing them from getting to the land 

 in Winter, they have not any barks to feed upon during that season, 

 except that of such sticks as they cut down in Summer, and throw 

 into the water opposite the doors of their houses, and as they gener- 

 ally eat a great deal, the roots above mentioned constitute a chief 

 part of their food during the Winter. In summer they vary their 

 diet, by eating various kinds of herbage, and such berries as grow 

 near their haunts during that season. 



When the ice breaks up in the spring, the beaver always leave 

 their houses, and rove about the whole Summer, probably in search 

 of a more commodious situation ; but in case of not succeeding in 

 their endeavours, they return again to their old habitations a little 

 before the fall of the leaf, and lay in their Winter stock of woods. 

 They seldom begin to repair the houses till the frost commences, and 

 never finish the outer coat till the cold is pretty severe, as hath been 

 already mentioned. 



When they shift their habitations, or when the increase of their 

 number renders it necessary to make some addition to their houses, 

 or to erect new ones, they begin felling the wood for these purposes 

 early in the Summer, but seldom begin to build till the middle or 

 latter end of August, and never complete their houses till the cold 

 weather be set in. 



Notwithstanding what has been so repeatedly reported of those 

 animals assembling in great bodies, and jointly erecting large towns, 

 cities, and commonwealths, as they have sometimes been called, I am 

 confident, from many circumstances, that even where the greatest 

 numbers of beaver are situated in the neighbourhood of each other, 

 their labours are not carried on jointly in the erection of their differ- 

 ent habitations, nor have they any reciprocal interest, except it be 

 such as live immediately under the same roof ; and then it extends 

 no farther than to build or keep a dam which is common to several 



