FOUR-FOOTED LAKB-DWELLERS. 1^9 



intelligent, but as a member of a community is one 

 of the wisest of mammals. 



It is as if man had lost all his instinctive knowl- 

 edge for the sake of gaining the ability to reason, and 

 the beaver had bargained away all possibility of indi- 

 vidual intelligence to gain more fully developed and 

 perfect intuitive knowledge and instinct. If we sup- 

 pose this to be the case, we may also suppose that 

 this is where the beaver has made his mistake. 



His instinct, it is true, is all that is needed to pro- 

 tect him against all his natural enemies and to fulfill 

 all the requirements of his life. It has taught him to 

 build his houses of mud and sticks in the water, out 

 of harm's way ; to make his door open at the bottom 

 of the lake or pond in which he has fixed his habita- 

 tion, into a passage upward that leads to a warm, dry, 

 comfortable chamber beneath the thick, strongly built, 

 domed roof of his house, where he can rest secure 

 from all beasts or birds of prey, none of which have 

 the art or strength to enter his fortress. It has taught 

 him to lay up stores of fish, the bark and twigs and 

 limbs of trees upon which he subsists ; to build dams 

 in order to keep the water at a proper height about 

 his habitation, so that it will not freeze solid in the 

 winter and imprison him in his house, or run, dry in 

 summer and expose him to the attacks of his enemies. 

 It has even taught him to dig canals in which to float 

 the trees he has felled to the dam he is building ; but 

 it has not taught him to exist and hold his own, as 

 does his humble cousin the muskrat, in the presence 

 of man. 



