HABITS OF THE BEAVER. 423 



and the author adds, " This is no doubt an exaggeration, or at least very 

 uncommon." 



Captain Bonneville tells of having seen trees cut by beavers, which 

 were 18 inches in diameter, as something marvelous, but this one at the 

 Shoshone agency is a foot larger. If I am not mistaken, Washington 

 Irving also expresses doubts, on the authority of Captain Bonneville, as 

 to whether the beaver exercises any instinct, or judgment, if you please, 

 in cutting the trees in such a way as to drop them into the water. I 

 think he says that he saw some or many trees which had fallen to the 

 shore-side, and from this fact reaches his conclusion that the direction 

 in which the trees fell was a matter of accident. 



I was for a day or two on the bank of Wind Eiver, some forty miles 

 from the nearest settlement, and where the beavers are quite abundant, 

 and examined a cotton-wood tree 18 inches in diameter, on which they 

 were nightly at work. It was just about ready to fall, and was being 

 cut so as to render its fall in any other direction than toward the water 

 impossible. This and the remembrance of Captain Bonneville's doubt 

 led me to look further, and I found within a distance of 300. yards of 

 the shore-line five other trees, nearly as large, which had been dropped 

 into the water, and one other about 10 inches in diameter, which had 

 been partly cut all around, but much more deeply on the water-side. 

 The fallen trees were in a quick turn of the stream, where swift deep 

 water swept along the shore, and the stumps showed the deepest cut in 

 each case next to the water. 



These trees were not cut for the purpose of making a dam, but for a 

 winter-store of food, which the bark and twigs furnish, and they are 

 dropped into the water to be there kept in a tender and palatable con- 

 dition for their owners. Some further examinations showed me that there 

 were other stumps of trees which had been cut off by the beavers a 

 short distance from the stream, too far off to have been intended to 

 reach the water, and these seemed to have no uniformi.ty of direction in 

 their fall. Is it not probable that these and other trees not dropped 

 into the water are cut during the summer for immediate consumption, 

 and give no proof whatever that these wise "fellers" do not know ex- 

 actly what they are about, but to the contrary ? 



m A MTIOML LIBRARY. 



Letter from W. S. Jevons, of Oivens College, England. 



When I returned from our long vacation, I found that you had been 

 so good as to remember our desire to possess the '^ Smithsonian Contri- 

 butions to Knowledge " in our library at Owens College. The librarian 

 has, I believe, forwarded the formal acknowledgment of their receipt; 

 but, both by desire of our principal and also of my own inclination, 

 I write to express our warm thanks for so valuable a present to our 

 library. 



