RESULTS OF BEAVERS’ WORK 163 
small enclosure above the large beaver pond in the 
Washington Zoo, there was a movement in front 
of the large hollow opening out on the water, and 
a head peeped out to see that all was safe for the 
owner’s regular evening exercise. The sun had 
long since disappeared behind the hill and every- 
thing had the quiet hush of evening. The deep 
roaring of the lions and tigers and the more distant 
barking of the seals alone disturbed this silence, 
when the beaver, fancying himself alone, plunged 
noiselessly into the water, diving beneath the log 
that lay partly submerged but a few feet from the 
narrow entrance and reappeared in the middle ot 
the small pond. Almost like a short piece of drift 
wood he lay with his tiny dark eyes gazing intently 
at me where I stood in-the shadow of a small tree. 
Observing no movement and not being of a 
suspicious nature he soon swam to shore and 
immediately walked, moving for all the world 
like a large smoothly coated Canadian porcupine, 
straight to the corner of the fence that divided him 
from his relatives. Once there he stood on his 
hind legs and tail, and with front feet resting on the 
horizontal bar, he gazed, with a longing wistful 
look shown by his entire attitude, at the lodge in 
which the other beavers lived. Never surely was 
loneliness shown more eloquently than by this soft 
furred animal as he stood there, the very picture of 
solitude in the midst of so many, as a stranger in a 
city where the fences of convention, bars as rigid as 
M2 
