In Beaver World. Enos A. Mills

and there brought all the youngsters up.

      Beaver have great fun while growing up. Posted on the edge of the house, they nose and push each other about, ofttimes tumbling one another into the water. In the water they send a thousand merry ripples to the shore, as they race, wrestle, and dive in the pond. They play on the house, in the pond, and in the sunshine and shadows of the trees along the shore.

      Beaver are mature the third summer of their lives, and at this time they commonly leave the parental home, pair, and begin life for themselves. There are stories to the effect that the parents of the youthful home-builders accompany the children to new scenes, help them select a building-site, and assist in the construction of the new house and dam. After this the parents return home. This probably is occasionally true. Anyway I once saw this program fairly well carried out, and at another time in a limited manner.

      The beaver is practical, peaceful, and industrious. He builds a permanent house and keeps it clean and in repair. Beside it he stores food-supply for the long winter. He takes thought for the morrow. These and other commendable characteristics give him a place of honor among the hordes of homeless, hand-to-mouth folk of the wild. During the winter he has but little to do except bathe and eat his two or three meals a day from the food he has stored in the autumn. Towards spring, when his wild neighbors are lean, hungry, and cold, he is fat and comfortable. In the spring he emerges from the house, but then his only work is occasionally to cut a twig for food. In the summer he plays tourist. He visits other colonies, and wanders up and down streams, going miles from home. In the late summer or early autumn he returns, makes repairs, and harvests food for winter.

      The beaver is a valuable conservationist, but there are localities in which he cannot be tolerated. Although dead wood is rarely cut by the beaver, many a homesteader has been disturbed by his cutting off and carrying away green fence posts. Recently beaver have returned to a few localities and got themselves into bad repute by felling fruit trees. Occasionally, too, in the West, they have lost caste by persistently damming an irrigation-ditch and diverting the water, despite the fact that a court has given both the title and the right to this water to some one else a mile or so down the ditch.

      In all logging operations, beaver never fail—where there is opportunity—to cut trees upstream and float them down with the current. Tree-cutting is an interesting phase of beaver life. A beaver will go waddling dully from the water to a tree he is about to cut down. All will look about for enemies; one may be wise enough—but the majority will not do so—to look upward to see if the tree about to be felled is entangled at the top. All appear to choose a comfortable place on which to squat or sit while cutting.

      Commonly when the tree begins to creak and settle, the beaver who has done the cutting thuds the ground a few times with his tail, and then scampers away, usually going into the water. Sometimes the near-by workers give the thudding signal in advance of the one who is doing the cutting. Now and then no warning signal is given, and the logging beaver occasionally fells his tree upon other workers with a fatal result. As with axe-men, the beaver doing the cutting is on rare occasions caught and killed by the tree which he fells.

      Rarely does the beaver give any thought to the direction in which the tree will fall. In a few instances, however, I have seen what appeared to be an effort on the part of the beaver to fell a tree in a given direction. From an uncomfortable place he cut the lowest notch on the side on which he probably wanted the tree to fall. On one of these occasions, the aspen tree selected stood in an almost complete circle of pines. The beaver took pains to cut the first and lowest notch in this tree directly opposite the opening in the pines. I have seen a number of instances of this kind. And he will sometimes leave the windward side of a grove on a windy day, and cut on the leeward, so that the felled trees are not entangled in falling.

      Rarely does more than one beaver work at the same time at a tree. In some instances, however, if the tree be large, two or even more beaver will work at once. But after the tree has been felled, ofttimes three or four beaver will unite to roll a large section to the water. In doing this, some may stand with paws against it and push, and others may put their sides or hips against it. On land, as in the water, small limb-covered trees are dragged butt foremost so as to meet the least resistance. Sometimes the beaver drags walking backwards; at other times he is alongside the tree carrying and dragging it forward.