a post set in the yard fifteen or twenty feet high, with a broad board nailed on the top. The bear would climb this post and lie down on the board. The first thing he did after lying down was to pull that chain up and put it in a coil at his side. His owner told me that one lesson sufficed to teach him anything. I have repeated many of these facts in order to bring them more clearly and forcibly to the mind of the reader. CHAPTER XXV. THE BEAVER. In the settlement of the Western States and Territories one of the sources of income, and the only industry which commanded cash for the efforts involved, was that of beaver trapping, the skin of the beaver selling as high as fifteen or twenty dollars. The weight of the beaver is from thirty to sixty pounds, and it is an animal possessed of great intelligence, as the amount and kind of work accomplished by it shows. It is a natural-born engineer, as connected with water; it can build dams across small streams that defy the freshets, and that hold the water equal, if not superior, to the very best dams that can be constructed by skilled engineers. In making their dams the sticks and poles which they use in the construction of the same are cut with their teeth, of which they have four, two in the upper part of the mouth and two in the lower. These poles they place across each other in all directions. They build their dams during the fall usually, and should they need repair, the work is done before the very cold weather commences, working only at night if danger is near. In the month of October they generally collect their food, which consists largely of the cottonwood; this is cut in lengths of from two to six feet, the diameter being sometimes six inches, and carry it into their ponds made by the dams, and sunk in the deepest portion of the same. I should have stated that the higher up the stream they go, their dams are built correspondingly higher; hence a dam built at an altitude of 1,000 feet would not be built as high as one built at an altitude of 3,000 feet, in order to overcome the deeper freezing at that point, for in constructing these dams they must be of sufficient height to give plenty of room to get at their food in the water under the ice. The beaver does not eat a particle of meat of any kind. The popular idea is that as they are animals that live in and about the water, that they live upon fish, but this is not so; for, as above stated, their principal food is the bark and the tender-wood of the cottonwood, and they also eat of other barks. They are one of the most cleanly animals that lives. They live in the purest water that can be found, generally selecting streams that take their rise in the mountains, and where they can have an abundance of water the year round to live in. They dam up the streams in order to make ponds of sufficient depth to swim in under the ice to obtain their food, for the bottom of this pond is their store-room during the winter months.