But I think myself that the beaver never had either of these ideas in its mind—at least not at first—but that it found out by a lot of little accidents—or, as we say, through practice—the advantages of both proceedings, and then acted accordingly. I see, for instance, in the plates which Mr. Morgan gives of the beaver-ponds, with the canals running out of them, that there are some little waterways which are not marked as canals. These, I suppose, must be meant to be natural, and whether they are or not, it is almost certain that there would be some shallow and elongated depressions in the ground round the pond, into which the water in it would run. It would be quite natural for the beaver to take advantage of these, and, in pulling large logs of wood into them, he would have found that they moved more easily when the ground near these little channels was muddy and sloppy. But simply by pulling and tugging at them there, he would have been making the ground muddier and sloppier, and so, having found out, by accident, the good he was doing, he might have gone on doing it on purpose, and thus, little by little, have got to making a canal. Now, perhaps, he knows exactly what he makes it for, and works just as one of our own engineers would, but even of this we cannot be quite sure. However, this is a book about facts, so I will leave these speculative questions for someone else (or for nobody) to decide. There is one other thing that the beavers make, besides their dams, their lodges, and their canals, and that is their meadows; but beaver-meadows, as they are called, are not the result of design on the part of the animal, but only the necessary consequence of its actions in other respects. Their appearance, and the way in which they are caused, are thus described by Mr. Morgan: “Where dams are constructed,” he tells us, “the waters first destroy the timber within the area covered by the ponds. When the adjacent lands are low, they are occasionally overflowed after heavy rains, and are at all times saturated with water from the ponds. In course of time the trees within the area affected are totally destroyed; and in their place a rank, luxuriant grass springs up. A level meadow, in the strict and proper sense of the term, is thus formed; although much unlike the meadow of the cultivated farm. At a distance they appear to be level and smooth; but when you attempt to walk over them, they are found to be a series of hummocks, formed of earth and a mass of coarse roots of grass rising about a foot high, while around each of them there is a narrow strip of bare and sunken ground. The bare spaces, which are but a few inches wide, have the appearance of innumerable watercourses, and through them the water passes when the meadows are overflowed.”