Here again, Gentlemen of the "Critic Class," you will reprimand my warmth, which in your opinion is impertinence, to presume to speak against my employers, but be pleased to recollect that, though I have spoken against some of their actions, yet I have not against their interests. 24. THE BEAVER (1807). =Source.=--_Travels through the Canadas_, by George Heriot, Deputy Postmaster-General of British North America. London, 1807. The beavers associate in bands to the number of about an hundred in each, and are supposed, by several who have witnessed their economy, to possess a certain jargon, by means of which they communicate their sentiments to each other. Certain it is, that they have a mode of consulting together respecting the construction of their cabins, their dykes, their artificial lakes, and many other things which concern the preservation and safety of their republic. They are said to station sentinels, whilst they are occupied in cutting down with their teeth trees as large in circumference as casks, on the borders of the lakes; and these sentinels, by a cry or by knocking their tail against the surface of the water, give warning of the approach of men or animals, when the others instantly forsake their labours, and, plunging into the water, save themselves by swimming to their cabins. When beavers have made choice of a meadow traversed by a rivulet, they construct, by their joint operation, dams or causeways, which, impeding the course of the water, produce an inundation over the whole meadow, sometimes several leagues in circumference. The dam is composed of trees, which these animals cut down with their four incisive teeth, drag along through the water, and arrange across the river in the situation most convenient for stopping its course. They afterwards bring grass, small wood and clay in their mouths and on their tails, which they deposit between the wood with so much industry and art, that a wall of masonry of greater strength could scarcely be constructed. They labour during the night with diligence and perseverance. Their tails supply the want of trowels, their teeth serve them for axes, and their forefeet for hands. Dykes, two or three hundred feet in length, twenty feet high, and seven or eight in thickness, are thus completed in the space of five or six months, although not more than a hundred of these little animals have assisted each other in the operation. The savages never destroy these dykes, but, from a principle of superstition, allow them to remain entire, and are satisfied with making only a small passage for the draining of the water. Besides the faculty which the beavers possess of cutting down trees, the judgment which they have acquired in directing the fall of these immense masses upon the water, appears still more singular. They pay attention to the direction of the wind, and carry on the process in such a manner as to derive aid from thence, and thereby