164 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS. 
that they are superintended in their labours by an 
overseer who gives notice to his workmen when to be 
at their posts by flapping with his tail upon the water, 
divides them into parties for each several kind of work, 
distributes their employments, assigns their stations, 
and superintends the execution of his commands, is too 
absurd to require refutation. But there are many other 
statements regarding them equally untrue, although not 
at first sight so palpably ridiculous. Thus it is said 
that their tails are used by them as sledges for the 
conveyance of their materials, a purpose for which the 
conformation of this appendage renders it highly im- 
probable that it can serve, and which observation has 
proved to be performed in a very different manner. 
But not content with metamorphosing this organ into 
a sledge, our travellers have also made it a trowel, and 
have given very particular descriptions of the manner 
in which the Beaver employs it in spreading the plaster, 
with which, according to their accounts, his work is 
overlaid. Unfortunately, however, it is equally unfitted 
by its structure for such an operation ; and the only 
organs employed in mixing up the mud with the rest of 
the materials, are the fore-paws and the mouth. These 
in fact are the instruments with which all the labours 
of the Beavers are effected ; and it is sufficiently obvious 
that neither with their assistance, nor indeed with the 
united powers of all their organs, could these animals 
drive stakes of the thickness of a man's leg three or 
four feet deep into the ground, or execute a variety of 
other feats for which they have obtained general credit. 
The sticks and branches which they use, instead of 
being driven into the ground, are laid for the most part 
in a horizontal direction, and they are only prevented 
from floating away by the stones and mud which are 
brought up by the Beavers in their paws from the 
