Natural History of the Beaver in Canada 347 



flattened, but its hind-feet are large and it is a good 

 swimmer, according to one observer "striking out with 

 its hind-legs after the fashion of a frog" (F. G. Aflalo). 

 In the same way the musk-rat and the beaver employ the 

 hind-feet in swimming, leaving the fore-feet or hands 

 free to carry loads. 



The beaver has a family (Castoridas) to itself, and 

 although belonging to the order of gnawing animals, 

 called indifferently Rodentia or Glires, it has no direct 

 relationship with the Muridaa. Strange as it may ap- 

 pear, the nearest existing relatives of the beaver are the 

 squirrels, chipmunks, wood chucks, and marmots, all 

 members of the squirrel family (Sciuridaa). 



Thus we see that the beaver occupies an isolated posi- 

 tion in systematic classification and it might have been 

 expected that the development of the young would 

 exhibit novel features, inasmuch as it has long been 

 known that various Rodents, as, for example, the rabbit, 

 mouse, and guinea-pig, present great differences in the 

 very early stages of their life-history. Nevertheless 

 nothing had been done to penetrate into the pre-natal 

 of the beaver when I took up the investigation of it three 

 years ago. Without going into details, it may be said 

 that the embryology of the beaver will afford a new 

 paradigm for that of the class Mammalia as a whole 



One of the most ingenious attributes of the beaver is 

 its capacity for suiting its labours to the nature of the 

 district which it inhabits, so that it behaves differently 

 in different environments, in other words, it possesses 

 considerable power of accommodating itself to its sur- 

 roundings, the only sine qua non being the presence of 

 water and vegetation. The first really authentic account 

 of the habits of the beaver was written by Samuel 

 Hearne, a servant of the Hudson Bay Company. In 

 1770, at the age of 24, he was sent out with Indian guides 

 from the company's fort near the mouth of the Churchill 

 River, to discover a fabulous copper mine and a mythical 

 north-west passage to China. Although his quest for 

 these objects was something of a wild-goose chase, he 



