The beaver have thus prepared the way for forests and meadows, orchards and grain-fields, homes and school-houses. In the golden age of the beaver, their countless colonies clustered all over our land. These primeval folk then gathered their harvest. Innumerable beaver ponds, which then shone everywhere in the sun, slowly filled with deposited, outspreading soil,--and vanished. Elm avenues now arch where the low-growing willow drooped across the canal, and a populous village stands upon the seat of a primitive and forgotten colony. A live beaver is more valuable to mankind than a dead one. As trappers in all sections of the country occasionally catch a beaver, it is probable that there still are straggling ones scattered along streams all the way from salt water up to timber-line, twelve thousand feet above sea-level. These remaining beaver may be exterminated; but if protected they would multiply and colonize stream-sources. Here they would practise conservation. Their presence would reduce river and harbor appropriations and make rivers more manageable, useful, and attractive. It would pay us to keep beaver colonies in the heights. Beaver would help keep America beautiful. A beaver colony in the wilds gives a touch of romance and a rare charm to the outdoors. The works of the beaver have ever intensely interested the human mind. Beaver works may do for children what schools, sermons, companions, and even home sometimes fail to do,--develop the power to think. No boy or girl can become intimately acquainted with the ways and works of these primitive folk without having the eyes of observation opened, and acquiring a permanent interest in the wide world in which we live. A race which can produce mothers and fathers as noble as those beaver in the Grand Cañon who offered their lives hoping thereby to save their children is needed on this earth. The beaver is the Abou-ben-Adhem of the wild. May his tribe increase! THE END Bibliographical Note Beaver literature is scarce. The book which easily excels is "The American Beaver and his Works," by Lewis H. Morgan. Samuel Hearne has an excellent paper concerning the beaver in "Journey from Prince of Wales Fort to the Northern Ocean," published in 1795. Good accounts of the beaver are given in the following books: "Beavers: their Ways," by Joseph Henry Taylor; "Castorologia," by Horace T. Martin; "Shaggycoat," by Clarence Hawkes; "The House in the Water," by Charles G. D. Roberts; and "Forest Neighbors," by William Davenport Hulbert. There are also admirable papers by Ernest Thompson Seton in his "Life-Histories of Northern Animals," by W. T. Hornaday in his "American Natural History," and by Baillie-Grohman in "Camps in the Rockies." Index Accidents, 144. Age, 14, 193. Air, blanket over pond, 202, 203. American Fur Company, 49. Arkansas River, 218. Astor, John Jacob, 49. Attitudes, 6. Audubon, John James, 53.