Adirondack Beaver ;'?< 



Often when scratching himself or performing his toilet the beaver 

 draws his tail forward between his hind legs and sits upon the 

 upper or dorsal surface of it. 



The beaver is an expert diver. When alarmed he goes under 

 with a loud slap against the water with his broad tail, followed 

 by a " kaplunk " of the disappearing body. At other times he may 

 stealthily sink beneath the surface without a sound. 



Seton mentions an instance where he observed a beaver that 

 swam under the surface for about a quarter of a mile. A specimen 

 which I once took in a trap, dove, and after it had been under prob- 

 ably half a minute I took out my watch to time it. At the end of 

 5 minutes and 10 seconds I began to fear that the beaver had 

 escaped and, poking around with a stick to see if it was still there, 

 after a few seconds located the beaver under the bank ; when I 

 poked it, it came to the surface. It had been under water altogether 

 about six minutes and no doubt would have remained under longer 

 had I not disturbed it. 



Instinct and Intelligence. Popularly the beaver is sometimes 

 credited with intelligence bordering closely upon the human kind. 

 I do not know of any experiments made with the beaver to deter- 

 mine whether its intelligence is above or below that of any other 

 species of rodent, but its brain is smooth like that of other rodents, 

 and it is probable that the beaver so far as mentality is concerned 

 cannot boast of any great superiority over the rabbit, the squirrel 

 or the rat. But in the course of the ages it has evolved a set of 

 instincts, highly complex, at which we cannot but marvel just as 

 we marvel at the instincts of the ant and of the. bee. These instincts 

 are inherited and at the right time in their life history, when the 

 proper stimuli prompt them, the young beaver will do certain things, 

 and do them in the same way and just as well as their parents, without 

 first having to be shown or taught how. The works of the beaver 

 usually appear to be so well adapted to a purpose that we some- 

 times are tempted to believe that the animal must have been con- 

 scious of the effect of each step in the process and that the whole 

 had been carefully planned out beforehand. But we experience 

 much the same feeling when we consider the ways of the ants and 

 the bees. 



Sociability and Wandering. The beavers are highly sociable 

 animals and this characteristic finds expression not only in the 

 works of the colony but also in their indulgence at times in play, 



