keeper as the fur is prized by the dealer.

Whilst we admire the beauty of the animal's coat, we should also be equally ready to bear witness to the elegance of its movements. The power of bounding and springing, and adjusting the body to the smallest apertures, is possessed in a great degree by all the mustellidæ, and by none more than the ermine. This facility of movement enables it to seize upon large birds; and the sportsman is no stranger to its attacks upon grouse, partridge, and ptarmigan. In return for this destructive work, the ermine makes some compensation by destroying rats and mice with an eagerness and fury not often experienced by these animals, which find their match in presence of the stoat. A captain of the Royal Navy thus describes the spirit and energy of one of these animals :

"He was a fierce little fellow, and the instant he obtained daylight in his new dwelling, he flew at the bars and shook them with the greatest fury, uttering a shrill, passionate cry, and emitting the strong musky smell which I formerly noticed. No threats or teasing could induce him to retire to the sleeping-place, and whenever he did so of his own accord, the slightest rubbing on the bars was sufficient to bring him out to the attacks of his tormentors. He soon took food from the hand, but not until he had first used every exertion to reach and bite the fingers which conveyed it. This boldness gave me great hopes of being able to keep my little captive alive through the winter, but he was killed by an accident."

Whether the incessant attacks made upon these animals will end in so thinning their numbers as to render the fur a rarity in Europe, must be left to the determination of future years; but when we consider that inore than one hundred thousand skins were till lately imported yearly into Britain, such a result would not surprise the natural historian.

Fur Animals belonging to the Aquatic Tribes.

MAN has not only laid the waters under tribute for food, but also for clothing. Not only do the Siberian wastes and the American forests yield their annual supplies of fur, but the vast rivers of the old and new world are sought out by the hunter, and their deep solitudes disturbed by the ceaseless energies of man, ever busy, with trap, net, and rifle, to increase his store of comforts at the expense of the animal kingdom. Hence remote seas, lakes, and rivers are examined for traces of the beaver, the otter, and the seal. The wild waters of the Aleutian Isles are visited for this purpose, nor do the stormy seas around the Icy Cape escape the scrutiny of the fur-trader. What an illustration of man's do

minion is this, that not only are the secret places of the earth laid open, and minerals extracted from the centres of primitive mountains, but the whale is drawn from his ocean-home, the seal surprised in his sea-cave, the otter dragged from his secluded restingplace in bay or river, and the beaver forced from the shelter of his dams and well-constructed habitations. The last-mentioned animal will first engage our attention.

4

These animals are well known, by name at least, to all; to the rustic who exhibits on fair-day his new beaver hat, and the fastidious gentleman who sends to his hatter for a head ornament weighing not more than five ounces. People will still, in their simplicity, talk of their "beaver hats;" but the time has almost

gone for such; the modern " gossamer" and "patents" being

no more indebted to the animal for their construction than the lady's bonnet.

Could the beavers write their own histories, we should hear some sage creature of that race lamenting the day when the hat was introduced among men. To this article of dress the decline of the ancient beaver kingdom must be ascribed; for its populous multitudes have perished before the long-continued and indiscriminate ravages of the Indian and European. Little did the first wearer of the hat calculate the effects which would follow; little did he imagine that from so slight a cause the almost total ruin of a large class of singular and interesting animals would ensue.

Perhaps no animal has been invested with so much romance as the beaver. Every thing about him was made to assume the appearance of the wonderful, and to exhibit marks of a skill and a reflection which must have puzzled the reader to decide whether this quadruped or man were the most entitled to be called a “reasoning animal."

It seemed as if men resolved to compensate the beaver for incessant persecutions, by compliments without end on its superior attributes and marvellous endowments. Teeth, tail, and feet were all praised; and men began at last to speak as if the beaver were a species of inferior humanity.

We do not deny that its habits are worthy of particular attention, otherwise it would not find a place in this work; but this admission is widely distinct from the extravagant details given in some of the older books respecting the habits of this animal. That the beaver is a wonderful example of the marvellous workings of that mysterious quality called instinct, cannot be denied ; but this will lead us to view the animal in a manner quite distinct from the system of those who have described him as a perfect architect, a skilful mason, an expert carpenter, and, in a word, as possessed of the whole cyclopædia of art and science. Those were the days of romance in natural history, when the true, with its real beauty, was neglected for the merely imaginary, with its tales of improbable and impossible wonders.

What are the ascertained habits of the beaver? To answer this question must be our first object. The answer comprehends the following subjects:-The structure of their houses, their dams across rivers, their powers of cutting timber, and their gregarious tendencies.

The houses are always built near lakes and rivers where the water is sufficiently deep to resist the winter cold, and remain unfrozen in the severest seasons. They are constructed of the materials carried down by the stream, or found along its banks, such as the branches of fallen trees and the drift-wood borne down from the higher regions by the floods. These materials, being mixed with mud and the rough stones found on the banks of the river, form a series of stout habitations for the quiet abode of these cautious creatures. The following extract is taken from the writings of a traveller who closely examined the habits of these singular animals. "The beaver-houses are always proportioned in size to the number of the inhabitants, which seldom exceeds four old and six or eight young ones; though by chance I have seen above double the number. Instead of order or regulation being observed in rearing their houses, they are of a much ruder structure than their dams; for, notwithstanding the sagacity of these animals, it has never been observed that they aim at any other convenience in their houses than to have a dry place to lie on; and there they usually eat their victuals, which they occa

sionally 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 only 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 family knew their own, and always entered at their own doors, without any further connexion with their neighbours than a friendly intercourse, and to join their united labours in erecting their separate habitations, and building their dams where required. Travellers who assert that the beavers have two doors to their houses, one on the land side and the other next the water, seem to be less acquainted with these animals than others who assign them an elegant suite of apartments. Such a construction would render their houses of no use, either to protect them from their enemies, or guard them against the extreme cold of winter. So far are the beavers from driving stakes into the ground when building their houses, 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 handfuls. 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 wolvereine, from attacking them during the winter; and as they are frequently seen to walk over their works, and sometimes to give a flap with their tails, particularly when plunging into the

water, this has, without doubt, given rise to the vulgar opinion that they used 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 houses are often of great thickness, having sometimes a wall of more than eight feet in depth. Their habitations have numerous openings into the water, through which the animals attempt to escape when assailed in their retreats. When the river is not of sufficient depth, the beavers construct a dam across the stream to produce an accumulation of water sufficient for their purpose. These structures have excited more attention than even the houses. When the torrent is strong, the dam is of course directed across the stream so as to break the rush of the water, and thus to secure the stability of the pile. These dams are sometimes eighty feet long, and frequently twelve feet thick, on the construction of which an immense mass of materials is used. Thus the means devised by our engineers to deepen the water in a harbour are also designed to secure somewhat similar results by the beavers. The timbers placed in these dams are of such a magnitude that those unacquainted with natural history would suppose so small an animal utterly incapable of managing or carrying them. Some of the trees cut for this purpose are twelve or eighteen inches in diameter; but even these are gradually divided by the sharp teeth of the animals. Were the reader to see one of these little workers sawing hour after hour at the hard trunk, he would perhaps feel that those who have ranked the beaver with carpenters had some reason for their judgment.

The trees are felled in summer, though not used till the approach of winter, at which time the beavers begin to secure their strongholds. How can the beaver fell such trees, the reader exclaims? The animal has most effective tools in its sharp cutting teeth, which, being protected by hard enamel, form an edge as sharp as that of the keenest axe. These teeth are indeed so hard, that cutting implements have been formed from them by the Indians; for one tooth placed in an axe-handle will plane and mould the hardest wood. Provided with such powerful means, it is not surprising that vast spaces in the forests are cleared of their trees by these persevering creatures. The emigrant, when exploring the wild woods for some spot suitable for a "clearing," is often surprised to find that the beaver has been at work before him, and sees, in the gnawed fragments of many a forest-tree, the marks of their singular labours. The remaining stumps of these trees are about two or three feet in height; for the cutting process is carried on at such an elevation as the beaver can reach by resting on its hind legs, in which position it works.

The tendency to construct a dam is shewn even in those beavers that have been domesticated, the largest pieces of furniture