[IS] 
The Beaver 
W 
HAT is this pretty little animal 
doing with that piece of wood? 
Already he has stripped off all 
the bark. Perhaps he will use it to 
strengthen the dam the beavers have built 
to keep the water of this pond from getting 
low. Beavers have to build dams, for if 
the water was low, other animals could 
enter their homes, which are holes in the 
See how flat his tail is! He swims in the water a great deal, and 
His coat is soft brown fur under long brown hair. 
banks, 
that is his rudder. 
The Seal 
Y ES, that is where it comes from— 
your mother’s sealskin coat. The 
beautiful soft, plush-like fur grew 
on an animal like this. These seals are 
sometimes called “sea-lions,” because they 
are so big and the males have a tawny mane 
over their shoulders. They have flippers 
instead of legs, the better to swim with. 
When on the ice or on land, the hind flip¬ 
pers are folded up under them, and the fore flippers are turned forward. 
They are about six feet long, and eat fishes, molluscs, crabs, and lobsters. 
The Walrus 
B 
R—R—R! Wouldn’t you be cold, lying on that cake of ice up in 
the Arctic Ocean? Well, these walruses are not. That is what 
they like,—either that, or tumbling about in the freezing water. 
They are real monsters of the sea, but are 
harmless to man. Their long ivory tusks 
are for digging up the clams, mussels, and 
seaweed on the sea-bottom, for those are 
their food. They lie, one resting his great 
flippers on another, in herds of many hun¬ 
dreds over the great ice floes. A walrus 
has no ears on the outside of its head, yet 
it hears. 
