Besides his lodge, or hut, the beaver has his burrow, and there are some beavers which only use their burrows to live in, and do not make a hut at all. The European beaver is now, unfortunately, almost extinct, at least in civilised Europe, but where it does still exist it is not often known to practise house-building. It could hardly have done so in ancient times, since Pliny, the Roman naturalist, who describes its habits, says nothing about this one. He would have done so, we may be sure, had he known of its existence, and as he was a most eager inquirer, and beavers were common enough in Europe then, he could have had no difficulty in finding out all about them, even if he had not been able to study them for himself. The European beaver, therefore, is in the same state as those American beavers which do not make huts, but just as these latter are exceptional in America, so a few beavers here have been seen making huts, like the American ones. The habit, no doubt, has been gradually evolved, and may have begun by some beavers driving their passages so far through the bank in an upward direction, that at last they broke through the surface, and had to be covered in. It is a curious fact that man, in very early times, lived in caves, and after that made a sort of house underground—a burrow, in fact—so that his habitations may have gone through the same process of development as have those of the beavers—only with him it has been carried a little farther. Beavers that do not build houses are called by the French-Canadian trappers _paresseux_, or idlers. Such individuals do not make dams either, for they live by large and deep rivers, whose course it would be impossible for them to stem. In the banks of these rivers they make their burrows, and live a more or less solitary life. I have just stated my own views in regard to these primitive animals, but the Indians have another way of accounting for them, which has nothing to do with evolution or development. Their idea is that, after a certain time, the young beavers are expelled from the family lodge by their parents, who wish them to marry and have children. If, however, they fail to do this, their parents receive them back into the lodge again, but make them, as a punishment, do all the work of repairing the dam. On the following summer they are sent out again to marry, but if again unsuccessful in their wooing, they are not received a second time, but are expelled from the community, and become “outcast beavers.” Thus, according to the Indians—and their story is, or was, confirmed by the trappers—there are both outcast beavers and slave-beavers. Ants, as we know, make slaves, and it would be curious if beavers, which so much resemble ants in their social habits, joined to their great architectural and engineering skill, were to imitate them, also, in this the most remarkable of their institutions. We cannot, with the example of ants before us, say that this is impossible; but no real