AMERICAN BEAVER. 359 



ton's Voyages, vol. i., p. 419.) " The Beaver is instinctively led to 

 build his house near the banks of lakes and rivers. He saws with his 

 teeth birch trees, with which the building is constructed ; with his teeth 

 he drags the wood along to the place destined for building his habitation ; 

 in this manner one piece of timber is carried after another, where they 

 choose. At the lake or river where their house is to be built, they lay 

 birch stocks or trunks, covered with their bark, in the bottom itself, and 

 forming a foundation, they complete the rest of the bviilding, with so 

 much art and ingenuity as to excite the admiration of the beholders. 

 The house itself is of a round and arched figure, equalling in its circum- 

 ference the ordinary hut of a Laplander. In this house the floor is for a 

 bed, covered with branches of trees, not in the very bottom, but a little 

 above, near the edge of a river or lake ; so that between the foundation 

 and flooring on which the dwelling is supported, there is formed as it 

 were a cell, filled with water, in which the stalks of the birch tree are 

 put up ; on the bark of this, the Beaver family who inhabit this mansion 

 feed. If there are more families under one roof, besides the laid flooring, 

 another resembling the former is built a little above, which you may not 

 improperly name a second story in the building. The roof of the dwell- 

 ing consists of branches very closely compacted, and projects out far over 

 the water. You have now, reader, a house consisting and laid out in a 

 cellar, a flooring, a hypocaust, a ceiling, and a roof, raised by a brute 

 animal, altogether destitute of reason, and also of the builder's art, with 

 no less ingenuity than commodiousness." 



It should be observed that Leems, who was a missionary in that 

 country, gave this statement as related to him by the Laplanders who re- 

 side in the vicinity of the Beavers, and not from his o\\ti personal ob- 

 servations. This account, though mixed up with some extravagancies 

 and the usual vulgar errors, (which we have omitted,) certainly proves 

 that the habits of the Beaver in the northern part of Europe are precise- 

 ly similar to those of that animal on the northern continent of America. 



