RESULTS OF BEAVERS' WORK 163 



small enclosure above the large beaver pond in the 

 Washington Zoo, there was a movement in front 

 of the large hollow opening out on the water, and 

 a head peeped out to see that all was safe for the 

 owner's regular evening exercise. The sun had 

 long since disappeared behind the hill and every- 

 thing had the quiet hush of evening. The deep 

 roaring of the lions and tigers and the more distant 

 barking of the seals alone disturbed this silence, 

 when the beaver, fancying himself alone, plunged 

 noiselessly into the water, diving beneath the log 

 that lay partly submerged but a few feet from the 

 narrow entrance and reappeared in the middle ot 

 the small pond. Almost like a short piece of drift 

 wood he lay with his tiny dark eyes gazing intently 

 at me where I stood in the shadow of a small tree. 

 Observing no movement and not being of a 

 suspicious nature he soon swam to shore and 

 immediately walked, moving for all the world 

 like a large smoothly coated Canadian porcupine, 

 straight to the corner of the fence that divided him 

 from his relatives. Once there he stood on his 

 hind legs and tail, and with front feet resting on the 

 horizontal bar, he gazed, with a longing wistful 

 look shown by his entire attitude, at the lodge in 

 which the other beavers lived. Never surely was 

 loneliness shown more eloquently than by this soft 

 furred animal as he stood there, the very picture of 

 solitude in the midst of so many, as a stranger in a 

 city where the fences of convention, bars as rigid as 



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