It is seldom that beavers can be seen at work in the day-time, as they usually perform their various tasks during the hours of darkness. I may as well here describe the beaver. It is about three and a half feet long, including the tail, which is flat, covered with scales, and shaped like a paddle, being about a foot in length. Its back is covered with long thin hair of a light chestnut colour, beneath which lies a fine wool of soft greyish brown. The head is rather round than pointed, the jaws of extraordinary strength, its teeth being also of great power and extreme sharpness, to enable it to gnaw through wood as well as to bite off the bark from the trees on which it chiefly lives. The object of the animals in building the wonderful dams they often construct, is that they may form ponds in which a sufficient depth of water can be maintained at all seasons of the year. Instinct rather than reason prompts them to do this; still, on examining the dams, it is difficult to suppose that they have been formed by animals. They are composed of young trees, or of branches cut into lengths, each of about three feet, and laid horizontally, one upon the other. While one party brings the log, another follows with mud and stones, which they place upon it to keep it from rising. At the bottom they are actually twelve feet thick, though as they rise towards the top they diminish to the width of two feet. When it is understood that some of these dams are between two and three hundred yards long, it may be supposed what an enormous number of small logs are required to make one. What appears still more extraordinary is that when the stream runs slowly, the dam is built directly across it, but should the current be strong it is curved, with the convex side pointing up the stream, so that it should the better withstand the force of the water. I frequently found these dams with small trees growing out of them, showing that they must have existed a number of years. In the lake thus formed by the dam the beavers build their houses, or lodges, as they are called by trappers. They are constructed in the same way as the dams, with small logs kept together by clay and lined with moss, the roof being plastered thickly with mud, which in time becomes so perfectly hard, that it is difficult to break through it. It is a task which the cunning wolverine--who is fond of beaver meat--can never accomplish, and he prefers to pounce down on any of the animals which incautiously venture forth, when he is in the neighbourhood. These "lodges" outside measure as much as seven or eight feet in height, and they are often from sixteen to twenty in circumference, but the walls are so thick that the interior does not exceed three feet in height and from six to eight in circumference. The entrance, which is under water, is at such a depth that they cannot be frozen in.