496 
THE LIVING WORLD. 
“ What a great boy am I.” If a person approaches they immediately dive into 
their holes, being notified of his arrival by the animals nearest his pathway. 
Presently a head here and there pops out, as though to discover whether the 
coast is again clear. The prairie dogs are happy-go-lucky little fellows, and 
i spend much of their time visiting and gossiping. One very curious thing about 
these dog-towns is that rattlesnakes and burrowing owls are to be found in the 
houses with the rightful owners. Though these snakes and owls seem to live 
| on good terms with the prairie dogs , there is evidence that they, at least occa- 
| sionally, devour their entertainers. This has been explained by supposing that 
they eat only such animals as die in their holes, thus performing the office of 
scavengers. The prairie dog receives its name not from its appearance but 
from the resemblance between the sound it utters and the barking of a dog. 
The Beaver (Castor fiber ) is rapidly becoming extinct, as mankind has been 
too unrelenting in the warfare which it has waged upon the creature. The 
beaver is so clever 
a builder that he 
has received at 
least his full 
share of praise. 
His carpenter’s 
outfit consists of 
chisel-shaped 
teeth, a long, 
scaled, convex, 
trowel-shaped 
tail, and webbed 
hind feet. After 
having cut down 
a tree, and used 
the same princi¬ 
ples as those of 
a Maine lumber¬ 
man, he cuts the 
wood into long, 
pointed timbers 
of small size, 
and upon these 
puts layers of stone and of mud; his dam, likewise, takes cognizance of the 
resistance with which it may be expected to meet, and has its form determined 
by the character of the stream. Having provided his dam (whose walls are not 
unfrequently several feet in thickness), he tunnels himself a residence which 
shall lie quite a distance back from the water, and which shall be provided 
with a double entrance to the water—one for. egress and the other for entrance to 
the house, and unerringly digs deep enough to suffer no inconvenience from the 
ice. Having built its house it lives upon the “ dormitory plan,” making its 
rooms of the most generous size, and arranging its beds along the walls. 
The beaver is common in the northern and north temperate latitudes of 
both Europe and America, but is very rare in the middle latitudes, and unknown 
in the south. They formerly abounded in England as far south as Berkshire, 
