1 82 Roosevelt Wild Life Bulletin 



chamber with the floor three or four inches above water level. It is 

 said that sometimes there may be a litter of grass on the floor, or 

 shredded wood ; at other times there may be no litter of any kind. 

 The size of the chamber is variable, from two or three feet to five 

 or six feet and, in exceptionally large lodges, it has been said to be 

 as much as 20 feet in diameter. The height of the ceiling may be 

 from one and a half to two and a half feet. In the great majority of 

 cases there is only a single chamber ; when more occur it is believed 

 that they represent separate but contiguous lodges. Like the dam, 

 the lodge constantly grows by sporadic additions to the outside, of 

 peeled sticks, poles and mud, so that in the course of a few years 

 a lodge may attain large dimensions. Of the two largest lodges that 

 I happened upon in the Adirondacks one measured 32 feet in its 

 longest diamenter, 29.5 feet in the shortest, and was 6 feet, 7 

 inches high; the other was 35 feet and 28 feet in longest and shortest 

 diameters, respectively, and 7 feet in height. 



As a rule a lodge is occupied by a single family of beavers, 

 which may include the young also of the year before. At times a 

 lodge may be occupied only by a single individual ; and an excep- 

 tionally large one may, according to some writers, have as many as 

 fifteen or twenty occupants. 



Beavers that live in holes in the bank are often, spoken of as 

 "bank beavers" but, contrary to popular notions, they are not a 

 different variety of beaver ; in other situations they would build 

 lodges. 



While the lodge furnishes a safe retreat in which to rest and rear 

 their young, the beavers invariably leave it at the approach of an 

 intruder and seek safety in the water. 



Classification and Description 



The beaver is the largest of North American Rodentia or gnaw- 

 ing mammals. It is assigned to the genus Castor of the family 

 Castoridae. This genus contains the only living representatives of 

 the family, namely, the North American beaver, Castor canadensis, 

 and the European beaver, Castor fiber. The American beaver is 

 represented in different sections of the country by a number of 

 geographic races or subspecies. These races are, according to Seton, 

 the type form Castor canadensis canadensis, whose range includes the 

 greater part of Canada and approximately the northern half of the 

 United States ; C.c. carolinensis, of the southeastern states ; C.c. 



