remained behind. As usual, the house was deserted during the summer months. We now noted several burrows under the bank at widely separate places along shore. Sometimes the beaver would be seen entering one of these holes and again another.

It is interesting and easy, to study the habits of wild creatures, and to note how uniform are their methods and practices. It is not so easy to determine reasons for their peculiar way of doing things. It is of course permissible to speculate, but one might be expected to furnish proof, when an assertion is made. For example, it has been stated by at least two writers, that beaver desert their homes in summer so that the vermin which infest their huts may die off from starvation during the absence of their fur coated hosts.

My own guess, if I were to hazard one, would be that since a beaver house must generally be placed in an exposed position, its owners find that with the sun beating down on its roof during June, July and August, the poorly ventilated interior becomes too hot for comfort. On the other hand, I have noted that the burrows in which they live in summer, are usually found under some overhanging tree, in a cool spot where the sun never penetrates.

During our wanderings through the woods that summer, Bige and I came upon a family of beavers at Mud Pond. These were doubtless also emigrants from the original Raquette Lake colony. Great improvements were in progress. An abandoned and broken down lumber dam at the outlet, which had not been used for lumber operations for many years, was being rebuilt by the beavers, and the Chief Engineer was on hand assisting and directing operations.

Section of Beaver Dam

On a subsequent visit, we saw the completed dam which raised the waters of the pond about three feet. An area more than a mile long and a quarter mile wide was now flooded. A swamp at the upper end was entirely covered and afforded water transportation from a large grove of poplar trees, which without the dam could not have been reached. Five years later, on the shores of this pond, the beavers had completely cleared of trees more than ten acres of ground. At this time four beaver houses were observed on the shore and on islands in Mud Pond.

When three years old, the children of the Chief Engineer left the parental homestead, mated with relatives in other colonies and set up house building and house keeping on their own account. Some of them, doubtless, located many miles away, others we know built dams and houses on streams emptying into Cherry Pond.

One summer Bige and I were trout fishing on West Bay Brook. We worked up stream about four miles from its mouth, and encountered seven beaver dams and as many houses. At one of these dams we found the white capped Chief working with some younger beavers. Our guess was, that some of these were his own offspring to whom he was giving instruction in engineering practice.

Beaver Posing

A year later, on Fishing Brook, twenty miles to the north-east, and fully fifty miles from the original colony on the Raquette tributary, we found several beaver colonies. They also settled on Minnow Brook. On Salmon River, from its mouth to Salmon Pond (which it drains), a distance of six miles, there is now a beaver dam every half mile. At one of these dams, a few years ago, we found the Chief Engineer at work. The dam was placed where the current was swift, and a big rock in mid stream was utilized as a pier, against which the two sections of the dam were braced. Such an adaptation of available means to accomplish a difficult engineering feat is surely something more than merely instinct.

Stone Pier in Beaver Dam

On an exploring trip over the foot hills of Dunwood Mountain, Bige and I came upon a very unusual beaver dam on Little Bear Brook. The brook at this point flowed through a deep ravine. The dam built across the valley measured in length at its top two hundred and ten feet. It was fifteen feet from the bottom of brook to top of dam, and we estimated the width at its base at forty feet. Water was flowing over a spillway three feet wide at one end of the dam. The upper and lower sides of the dam sloped away steeply like the roof of a house, and along the ridge was a row of stones, each about the size of a man's head. We walked across the dam on these stones without wetting our feet, and we wondered how the beavers got them into position. It did not seem possible that such small animals could lift and carry these heavy stones to where they were placed. It was impossible for a human to roll them up over the lower and outer face of the dam, which was a network of interwoven and criss-crossed saplings, sticks and brush. The only other method which appeared to us possible was for the stones to be rolled or pushed up the upper and inner slope of the dam under water to the top. The inner face of the dam was of course plastered over with mud and was relatively smooth.

Beaver Dam Fifteen Feet High

We cooked our eggs, bacon and tea on the bank at one end of the dam. After we had eaten and drunken and while I was engaged in taking some photographs, we were agreeably surprised to see our old friend, the bald headed Chief Engineer, swimming down the pond toward us. As a signal that we were recognized, he saluted by humping his back, lifting his broad tail and striking the water a resounding slap, thus throwing a fountain of spray high into the air. His presence signified to us that this marvelous piece of engineering was the product of his skill in plan and execution.

We were able to go in a boat past the beaver house on our pond, about a mile up the river. At the head of navigation was a big flat rock, over which the water flowed, making a fall about one foot high, and above this fall were rapids. An old and much used trail started at this flat rock and led up the river; a branch also took one to Wolf Pond and another branch led to Dunwood Mountain. We often used this trail, as also did other visitors at the pond. And doubtless, so did the Indians many years ago.

A pair of young beavers, both of them probably relatives of the Chief Engineer, built a dam across the river on this flat rock. The dam was about two feet high, backing the water up the rapids thirty yards and making a fall of water over the dam three feet high. Above this dam the beavers started building a house, but before the house was completed, high water following three days of rain washed away the dam. The beavers at once rebuilt the dam in the same spot, but within a month the dam had been the second time washed away. The high water of the following spring carried the dam, rebuilt in the fall, off of the flat rock for the third time.

On the smooth flat surface of this rock there was no suitable anchorage for a dam, and the unusual pressure of high and swift flowing water pushed it down stream and scattered the materials of which it was built.

It was a bad dam-site! and this is doubtless what the Chief Engineer told the youngsters; for it was at this period that the Chief took a hand in the game.

The house that had been built above the flat rock was abandoned and was never again occupied.

A pair of beavers which we believed to be the hard luck animals above mentioned, we now found were beginning operations on a new dam about a quarter of a mile down the river, and the Chief Engineer worked with them and seemed to be directing the job. We watched the