The brook which runs through the park dwindles to a very small stream after the summer heat has melted all the snow from the peak; and there would be too little water for the beavers to swim in if they had not built a number of solid dams across the stream, making as many pretty ponds, where they and the muskrats and the wild ducks lead a jolly life together. There is a chain of five of these beaver-ponds, which begins quite near the house. Often in the early morning, we see places where they have been at work all night, mending their dams, cutting down willow bushes, and even felling trees of some size with a smooth cut that a skillful woodman might be proud of; but all day long there is never a sound of work in the silent village. So, hearing something plunging into the pond in the late twilight, I stole to the bank and looked through an opening in the willow thicket. There by the dim light I saw their round, dark bodies swimming around and around and up and down the pond as silently as fishes, with only a gentle splash now and then as they dipped beneath the surface. It must have been a holiday evening with them, for they were taking a rest from their hard work, and it seemed in the darkness as if they were only playing together in the water. But I had only a little time to watch them, for some slight noise or the scent of the enemy soon spread an alarm, and in a moment every beaver had disappeared from the pond. Some years ago, we used to read that all the beavers would soon be killed; for beaver fur had long been fashionable, and the price of every skin was very high. It is strange that the life and happiness of millions of little animals in the backwoods of America and Siberia should depend on the whims of the grand ladies of Paris and London; but so it is. When the beaver fur went out of favor, and the slaughter of the Alaska seals began, the beavers increased wonderfully in all the Western creeks and rivers. But if the Princess of Wales should happen to fancy a garment of beaver fur, woe to the unhappy little beavers of the Rocky Mountains! Thousands of other grand ladies must follow the fashion, and thousands of beavers must furnish the fur.