But the insect-eaters have no water-animal to match the Beaver in sagacity, judgment, or engineering. For here we have a creature not much larger than a good-sized cat, cutting down trees, dragging logs six feet long to the water’s edge, and building with them the most elaborate log-houses and water-dams. With hind feet webbed up to the claws, and his broad tail as a rudder, the beaver has so much swimming power that his fore legs are free to carry and place the wood, while his broad orange-coloured teeth, as sharp as chisels, which grow as fast as he wears them away, are his cutting instruments. With them he gnaws a deep notch in the trunk of a larch or pine or willow, as deep as he dares without fear of its falling, and then going round to the other side, begins work there till the trunk is severed and falls heavily on the side of the deep notch, and therefore away from himself. Then, after stripping off the bark and gnawing the trunk into pieces about six feet long, he uses his fore-paws and his teeth to drag them into position to build his dam. The lighter branches he uses to make his oven-shaped lodge, laying them down in basket-work shape, plastering them with mud, grass, and moss, and lining the chambers with wood-fibre, and dry grass; and the logs he piles up to form dams, lest at any time the stream should flow away and leave the entrances to his home dry. These dams are very skilfully and cunningly formed. He always makes the deep notch in the trunk on the side near the water, so that the tree in falling comes as near as possible to the stream; then he does not always clear away all the branches, but he and his companions place the logs with these lying _down_ the stream, so that they act as supports to resist the current and prevent the dam being washed away. Thus they make a broad foundation, sometimes as much as six feet wide, and upon this they pile logs and stones and mud till they have made a barrier often ten feet high and more than a hundred feet long. In this way they clear the woods just round their stream, as if a whole gang of wood-cutters had been there at work; and as the dams check back the water and form broad meres, there are soon swamps on all sides, where peat moss grows and “beaver-meadows” are formed. Here the beavers live in companies, each in his own chamber with his wife and family, though underground passages often lead from one to the other, and when water-plants and soft bark are scarce, they will often travel some way inland to feed on fruits and grain. But if among the community any are lazy or will not take partners, they are driven out, to find a refuge in holes of the river-banks, where they sulk alone.