CLASS I. MAMMALIA: 
ORDER 7. RODENTIA. 
383 
victuals, which they occasionally take out of the water. It frequently happens that some of the 
large houses are found to have one or more partitions, if they deserve that appellation, but it is 
no more than a part of the main building, left by the sagacity of the beaver to support the roof. 
On such occasions, it is common for those different apartments, as some are pleased to call them, 
to have no communication with each other but by water; so that, in fact, they may be called 
double or treble houses, rather than different apartments of the same house. I have seen a large 
beaver-house built in a small island that had near a dozen apartments under one roof; and, two 
or three of these excepted, none of them had any communication with each other but by water. 
As there were beavers enough to inhabit each apartment, it is more than probable that each fam- 
ily knew their own, and always entered at their own doors, without any further connection with 
their neighbors than a friendly intercourse, and to join their united labors in erecting their sepa- 
rate habitations, and building their dams where required. 
"So far are the beavers from driving stakes into the ground when building their houses, as has 
been asserted, that they lay most of the wood crosswise, and nearly horizontal, and without any 
other order than that of leaving a hollow or cavity in the middle. When any unnecessary 
branches ^project inward, they cut them off with their teeth and throw them in among the rest, 
to prevent the mud from falling through the roof. It is a mistaken notion that the wood-work is 
first completed and then plastered; for the whole of their houses, as well as their dams, are, from 
the foundation, one mass of mud and wood, mixed with stones, if they can be procured. The 
mud is always taken from the edge of the bank, or the bottom of the creek or pond near the door 
of the house; and though their fore-paws are so small, yet it is held close up between them under 
their throat; thus they carry both mud and stones, while they always drag the wood with their 
teeth. All their work is executed in the night, and they are so expeditious, that in the course of 
one night I have known them to have collected as much as amounted to some thousands of their 
little haudfuls. It is a great piece of policy in these animals to cover the outside of their houses 
every fall with fresh mud, and as late as possible in the autumn, even when the frost becomes 
pretty severe, as by this means it soon freezes as hard as a stone, and prevents their common 
enemy, the wolverene, from disturbing them during the wnnter-; and as they are frequently seen 
to walk over their work, and sometimes to give a flap with their tail, particularly when plunging 
into the water, this has, without doubt, given rise to the vulgar opinion that they use their tails 
as a trowel with which they plaster their houses; whereas, that flapping of the tail is no more 
than a custom which they always preserve, even when they become tame and domestic, and more 
particularly so when they are startled. 
"Their food consists largely of the root of the common yellow water-lily. They also eat the 
bark of trees, particularly those of the poplar, birch, and willow; but the ice preventing them from 
getting to the land in the winter, they have not any bark to feed on in that season, except that 
of such sticks as they cut down in summer, and throw into the -water opposite the doors of their 
houses, and as they generally eat a great deal, the roots above mentioned constitute a principal 
part of their food during the winter. In summer they var}^ their diet by eating various kinds of 
herbage, and such berries as grow near their haunts during that season. When the ice breaks 
up in the spring, the beavers always leave their houses, and rove iibout until a little before the 
fall of the leaf, when they return again to their old habitations, and lay in their winter stock of 
wood. They seldom begin to repair their houses till the frost commences, and never finish the 
outer coat till the cold is pi'etty severe, as has been already mentioned. AVhen they erect a new 
habitation, they begin felling the wood early in the summer, but seldom begin to build until the 
middle or latter end of August, and never complete it till the cold weather be set in. 
"Persons who attempt to take beaver in winter should be thoroughly acquainted with their 
manner of life, otherwise they will have endless trouble to effect their purpose, because they have 
always a number of holes in the banks, which serve them as places of retreat when any injury is 
offered to their houses, and in general it is in those holes that they are taken. When the beavers 
which are situated in a small river or creek are to be taken, the Indians sometimes find it neces- 
sary to stake the river across, to prevent them from passing; after which, they endeavor to find 
out all their holes or places of retreat in the banks. This requires much practice and experience 
