64 Bird Day Book 



THE BEAVER. 



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1"* HE Beaver easily leads the mammals of the world in mechani- 

 cal and engineering skill, and also in habits of industry. 

 Being chiefly nocturnal in its habits, it sleeps by day, and after 

 nightfall carries on its work unmolested. It is seldom that anyone 

 sees a live Beaver in its haunts during the middle of the day, but 

 it is possible to do so during the hour before sunset. In public 

 zoological gardens and parks, the persistence and success of this 

 animal in avoiding observation is very disappointing to visitors, 

 and exasperating to directors and keepers. 



This is the largest gnawing animal in North America. A 

 huge specimen caught in Maine, in 1900, weighed a trifle over 50 

 pounds. A large one in the New York Zoological Park is 31 

 inches long, has a tail 12 inches long and weighs 44 pounds. 



The American Beaver is still found in a few localities — but 

 in very small numbers — from the Rio Grande in Texas throughout 

 the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain regions 

 northward to the limit of trees, and southeastward through Canada 

 to northern New England. The number now remaining in Colo- 

 rado has been estimated at one thousand. 



The Beaver's efforts are directed toward its own preservation 

 and comfort. It builds extensive dams of mud, grass and sticks, 

 iin order to create ponds in which it can hide from its enemies, 

 maintain a safe refuge close by the wood on which it feeds, and 

 have an under-water doorway to its house and burrow. More 

 ,than this, the pond serves as a refrigerator, in the bottom of which 

 ,the animal stores its supplies of food-wood for winter use, when 

 the surface is frozen for a long period. 



Sometimes when food-wood on a beaver pond becomes scarce, 

 the animals dig canals into places where fresh supplies can be cut, 

 and floated down to the pond. These canals are usually about two 

 feet wide. 



A Beaver is readily recognized by its very flat hairless and 

 scaly tail, which beyond the hair of the body is about 9 inches long 



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