CANALS FOR BRINGING HOME FOOD 
work in the spring. This, as you will see, is hard work, and 
after the trees have been cut from near the bank of the stream 
the animals would be com- 
pelled to leave it, were it 
not for further ingenuity 
in engineering. The con- 
tinual raising and exten- 
sion of the dam deepens 
and spreads the pond, and 
little by little makes fresh 
trees accessible; but the 
clever little woodsmen do 
more than this, for they 
dig regular canals, some- 
times hundreds of feet in 
length, where the ground 
is low, in order to reach 
groves of desirable trees, 
and so get stores of bark 
out of reach were they : 
obliged to carry it over- pais 
land. ‘There is perhaps FOREST CANAL CUT BY BEAVERS. 
no more useful part in the whole service of a beaver 
dam than the keeping full of these water roads, for they 
are the highways of both food and safety to the whole 
community. 
Ys 
iT 
7s 
ZL. 
WAU 
A 
The beaver was at the foundation of our national wealth, and is still 
one of the important objects of the fur hunter and trader. It has excited 
enormous interest, and has been made the subject of at least two special 
books.1® Lately, many descriptive articles, illustrated by instructive 
photographs, have been printed in American magazines, but they seem to 
have added nothing beyond their pictures to the accurate and exhaustive 
studies of Morgan. These animals do well in the semicaptivity of park 
streams, and most zodlogical gardens, especially those at New York and 
Washington, contain flourishing colonies, while they have been successfully 
467 
