We have seen the beaver as a dam-maker and a house-builder, but we have not yet considered him as a maker of canals. This we will now proceed to do. In the construction of the dam and lodge, a great quantity of wood is, as we have seen, required, and when the trees do not grow very thickly, those on the edge of the pond are soon cut down and made use of, and gradually, as more and more fall, the beavers have to go farther and farther away from the water, in order to procure fresh timber. To transport this felled timber, overland, to the pond becomes a more and more laborious task, and at last an impossible one, many of the logs made use of being of considerable, or even of great size, when compared with that of the beaver itself. To overcome this difficulty, the beaver sets to work and excavates a trench or cutting in the ground, about three feet wide and as many deep. Commencing it at the brink of the pond, he carries it on to the spot where the trees he covets are growing, and when these, in their turn, have been cut down, he lengthens it till it reaches others, and so on, following the trees as they gradually recede from the neighbourhood of the pond. Of course the water runs up into the channel thus excavated, so that now, when the beaver has cut up his logs, he has only to float them down the canal that he has so cleverly excavated. This he does by swimming with them in his mouth, or pushing them in front of him with his paws and nose; the water (though there is no current to help) offers very little resistance, and it is now quite an easy matter. Both the trappers and the Indians call these cuttings canals; and canals they are, it is obvious, just as much as those we make for barges to ply on. According to the size of the pond, and the scarcity or otherwise of the trees near its banks, will be the number of the canals made from it by the beavers. A pond figured in Mr. Morgan’s book has five, at different points, all round it, and some might have a great many more. It is wonderful the length to which some of these canals extend. One that Mr. Morgan speaks of was close on six hundred feet, and there are some that are longer.