CASTOROIvOGIA. 67 



" It was then that without moving from my place, I saw quite a 

 hundred of these animals occupied on a work as admirable as it was 

 surprising. There were a dozen of them, who pressing close to 

 one another and standing on their hind feet were sawing, or rather 

 cutting with their teeth a large tree about 1 2 feet in circumference, 

 whilst more than fifty others were occupied in cutting and trim- 

 ming the branches of another tree already fallen. 



" It was a pleasure to me to see the cleverness with which they 

 conducted these branches by swimming. One moment I saw them 

 jumping and rolling over these materials, then I could no longer 

 see either branches or beavers, and in some few moments, I per- 

 ceived them in still greater numbers on the surface of the waves, 

 holding as if in anger these same branches which had fallen to them, 

 and with which they dived to the bottom of the river. 



'■' The most amusing part to me was to see two seated on their 

 tails, solely occupied in watching the workers and in preventing 

 any advance on the side that the tree which they were cutting 

 ought to fall. Several others a little farther off, seemed to me to act 

 as inspectors or overseers to direct the work, it might be in hurrying 

 the idle, or helping to roll away stones or take away the cuttings 

 which sometimes impeded the workers too much, or in reloading 

 those who let the mortar fall, while others finally who represented 

 masons, prepared this same mortar mixed with rich earth which 

 others had brought to them from the bottom of the river, and a 

 little gravel collected on the bank. 



' ' This gravel well hardened, or beaten together in this clay as 

 much by their tails as by their feet, would afterwards become hard 

 and keep sound at the bottom of the water as a cement capable of 

 strengthening their dams, and a mortar fit to build their lodges 

 with." 



The exactness with which the various processes are here recounted 

 is distressing to those who have watched in vain to see the beavers 

 at work, for they are intensely shy; but the statement that " after 



