42 Union Bay 



vested for winter use? Had the place been visited by another 

 group? I could find no place where the pieces might have 

 been placed in storage, nor did I find any floating logs in 

 the canals. 



Contrary to my expectations, there was no great change 

 after the last of the silver poplars had been cut. I noticed 

 that willows had been removed in places along the canal but 

 not in quantities as impressive as the cutting on the island. 

 Whether some of the beavers had moved when the food 

 supply on the island gave out or whether they still remained 

 was something I could not determine. Some of them cer- 

 tainly remained, for now and then I heard the slap of a broad 

 tail and if I turned quickly I could watch the dive of the 

 animal I had disturbed. 



Some years after the beavers had cropped the island I took 

 a winter walk which carried me past a section of marsh canal. 

 I had not inspected the area for some time because dumping 

 of dirt from basement excavations on the campus had blocked 

 the canal enough to prevent the passage of my canoe. The 

 place lay just outside the fence of the football stadium. As 

 I looked at the ice-covered channel and at the trees on the 

 other side my eyes were attracted to a heap of loosely piled 

 logs about six feet high and fifteen or twenty feet in diameter. 

 It could only be one thing, but it seemed impossible that this 

 pile could be what I thought it was. I looked at it closely 

 before making my decision. It was not a mass of miscellane- 

 ous pieces dropped there by a dredge: there was a regularity 

 in the piling and in the size of the pieces. Through my glasses 

 I inspected the way in which the ends of the pieces were 

 marked. There was no doubt about the structure. It was a 

 beaver lodge. 



I had always been glad to see a beaver lodge in the moun- 

 tains, but I felt that I had received the ultimate from the 

 marsh when I looked at this dome-shaped pile of logs, mud, 

 and vegetation. I wondered whether there was a supply of 



