the edge of the forest next the slough a few years before, a fire (doubtless started by some careless hunter), had burned over several acres, and this was now covered by a "second growth" of poplar. It was there that the beavers cut most of their lumber. The water in the slough was shallow and filled with pond lilies, so a canal three feet wide, two feet deep and two hundred and twenty feet long was dug across this mudhole. Through this canal the beavers floated their sticks and brush and placed them on their storage pile under water so that the bark, which they eat, might be kept soft and fresh for winter use. Also, so that it might be reached from their house under the ice, after pond and river were frozen.

Day after day Bige and I watched the progress of this harvest. Saw the beaver towing the floating logs through the canal into the pond and up the river to the lumber pile where the beaver would dive with his stick and presently come to the surface again, leaving the stick under the water; and we wondered how he did it. Also we discussed possible ways of making a floating stick sink. From our boat we could see the pile of wood below the surface of the water and we could see no stones on the pile.

Bige stoutly argued in support of the theory that the beaver sucked the air out of the pores in the wood, that the water flowed into the vacuum thus produced, making the stick heavy enough to sink. In order to demonstrate his theory, Bige took the axe from camp, cut a poplar sapling an inch and a half in diameter and the usual beaver length, put one end in the water and sucked on the other end of the stick. After repeated trials and failures to make the stick do anything but float, Bige decided that his "sucker was not powerful enough." The next day, looking down into the water from our boat, we saw one end of the axe-cut stick in the wood pile with other sticks cut by beaver teeth.

Bige Testing the Power of His Sucker

After my return to the city, Bige reported from time to time, making visits to the beaver house, seeing beaver swimming under the ice, carrying sticks from the wood pile into the tunnel leading to the house; also later, beaver bringing peeled sticks out of the house and placing them in a very orderly manner on another pile. Reports also reached me of beaver under the ice digging pond lily roots and carrying them into the house.

In the following April after the ice in the pond had broken up, the beavers came out of their winter home and brought with them six young beaver puppies. The father beaver with the white head now went away on his summer exploration trip. We later learned that it was the habit of all male beavers to wander far from home during the summer months. The mother remained at the pond and took care of her six young ones; but with them she moved into the burrow in the bank where we had first seen the old male beaver go to hide.

Many times during the summer we saw the young beavers sunning themselves on the bank or playing in the water near the shore. The mother was always somewhere near, and invariably sounded a warning by pounding the water with her broad tail, whereupon the youngsters would scamper for cover and each would precede his dive by slapping the water with his little ladle-like tail, in feeble imitation of the mother.

One day in June a hawk swooped down, grabbed one of the young beavers and carried him away. Later, a pekan, sometimes called a fisher, killed another one. Apparently the mother scared him off. We found the dead baby beaver, and tracks in the mud gave us the name of his murderer.

The Pekan

Early in July of that summer, while on a fishing trip to Wolf Pond, six miles to the east, Bige and I met our white-headed beaver friend. A slap on the water and a shower of spray informed us that we were recognized. It also spoiled our fishing for at least half an hour.

Toward the end of the same month we met him at the mouth of West Bay Brook on Cedar Lake. This was nine miles west of his home and fully fifteen miles from Wolf Pond, where we last saw him.

In the third week in August we again saw our beaver with a white cap. This time on Pine Brook where he was assisting two other beavers (possibly a brother and sister of his,) in building a dam across the brook. We were fortunate in being able to conceal ourselves, and for a time watched operations. Apparently, our friend was bossing the job and directing the operations of the other two. It seemed that his ability as an engineer was recognized in beaver world, and he therefore had been called in to supervise a difficult undertaking. Thereafter we called him the Chief Engineer, and he many times proved his right to the title.

In September the Chief Engineer returned to his home at Cherry Pond, and there followed a season of great activity among the beavers. Some of their work we were privileged to see in progress, all of it we saw after completion. The young beavers were now about one third the size of their parents, but they all worked.

First, the entire family visited the outlet of the pond, where the Chief demonstrated to the others that with the rocky stream bed and the accumulated drift-wood, a dam would be unnecessary to maintain water in the pond at its present level. Next the house must be enlarged to make room for a family of six instead of two, as in the previous winter. When completed, the house was elliptical in shape, twenty-two feet across its base in the short diameter and thirty feet in its longer dimension. It was also increased in height to eight feet. The peeled sticks piled up under the ice during the previous winter were now utilized in making additions to the house with other sticks and brush brought from the woods.

A One Night Camp

The interior of the house was enlarged to more than twice its former size by cutting away and dragging out through the tunnels, surplus materials. In doing this, several pillars were left standing for supports to the enlarged ceiling.

Three additional tunnels were dug, making five channels for entrance and exit. Those terminating in shallow water were continued as ditches to deeper water.

The storage warehouse also was made larger and deeper, not only to provide mortar for enlarging the building, but because more food must be stored for six mouths than was required for two. A very high grade of what is called "instinct" in animals must be required to calculate and determine just how much food to store for a winter's supply for a family of a given size. It has been asserted by those who think they know, that in this matter a beaver never makes a mistake. That he also stores an extra amount of food for an unusually long and severe winter. So far as I have observed, they seem to come through the winter in good physical condition.

A picture, which I have longed to secure on a film, but which, so far, I have only been able to fix on the retina of an eye, represents a young beaver about the size of a kitten, not fully grown, in an upright position, holding in his two hands and against his breast a gob of mud, while he laboriously and clumsily struggles up the steep side of his house, on the roof of which he is about to deposit his burden. In the water, towing a young log or a bushy branch, he is much more at home and more graceful in his movements.

The following spring there came out of our beaver house, the Chief Engineer, his wife, four yearlings and a new family of five babies. The "old man" now went off on his annual exploring trip, but he took with him the four older children, while the mother and the babies