I do not think the dams made by beavers show as much ingenuity as their canals. It is much easier and safer for them to carry their food and building material by water than land. So sometimes they cut a canal across the bend of a stream to shorten the distance. Sometimes, again, it is cut through the mud, until they reach firm ground for their burrows. These canals are usually about three feet wide and three deep, and they are sometimes five hundred feet long. Any engineer will tell you that it needs a good deal of skill and ingenuity to decide where to lay out such a canal as that, and then to cut it regularly, so that the water shall flow smoothly through. And the most remarkable thing of all, is that they know how to combine the principles of the canal and the dam, so that when they come to an obstruction, such as a rock in the bed of their stream, they immediately make a dam to secure the necessary flow of water. Successive generations evidently work for many years upon these canals, and I can hardly think of anything else done by an animal that shows so much contrivance. The home or lodge is always separate from the dam. Sometimes a cord of wood is used in building one house. There is an entrance under water like that of the musquash, and sometimes two. These openings are very neatly made. The beavers drag their branches and pieces of bark into the water, and then take them into the dining-room by the hidden entrance. Indeed, I believe the house is all dining-room, but it is always very neatly swept. There are not often more than eight or ten beavers, old and young, in a single house. Besides the houses, they like to have burrows in the banks, and spend part of their time in each. The young beavers live at home for almost two years before they go to housekeeping for themselves. They are queer little things, and their253cry is like that of a young child. Mr. Morgan once saw a little beaver in an Indian's house, and it was lapping milk out of a saucer like a kitten, and an Indian baby was pulling its fur. Then there was a little cry, and Mr. Morgan thought it was the Indian baby, till he found it was the baby beaver. It has always been an interesting question for naturalists how the beaver learns to build. Does he learn it by observing his parents, or would he know how to do it if he were brought up alone? Buffon, a great naturalist, thought that it was all learned by observation. So Cuvier, another great naturalist, took a very young beaver and brought him up by hand, apart from all his kind. They gave him branches of willow; he cut the branches and piled them in one corner of his cage. Then they gave him earth, which he made into lumps with his forefeet, and piled them with the branches into a solid mass. This shows it was instinct that taught the beaver to build.—Sel.