Beavers At Work

In almost any streani m the motuitamons parts of Wyoming Territory you may find more or less beavers and beaver dams. But Greeu river and tliis wholc región, writcs a niember of Hayden's surveying party, surpasses any plaoe I know of as a resort for tliese auirnals, now so scarco east of the Mississippi. In the rocky canon liigher up, this creek was thirty or forty yards aoross, nor I would it have been muoh wider in the more open valley below liad it not been impeled. But for a dozen miles the beavers had so dammed it and choked it with their liouses that the water spread out to a mile or more in width, and hundreds of dead or living trees, once fair back from the margin, were standing equally far out in tho water. Some of tlie dams measured 100 óf more feet in leugth, and were built on a curve, with the hollqw of the curve up stream, yet so substaiitially that they were standing the beating of tho freshet with slight damage. All a long the bank of the stream the hillsidc was bare of aspens, and their stumps, cut ofi" close to the ground, showed what had destroy ed them. Some of the stumps were of trees ten or twelvo inohes in diameter and seventyfive yards from the water, yet there was no doubt that these rodents had relied those trees, trimmed off the branches, peeled away the bark, and then dragged tho log all the way to the water to put into a new dam or repair an old one. Indeed, we surprised some of them at work. Most of the dams wem shorter thali I liave mentioned, and ran from one to another, so that there was ii network of them supporting a growth of willows, and cach inclosing a little basin of deep, still water, in which would rise like nn island the domed top of their home. Bnt the houses of many were under the bank, and of others beneath the dams, as we could see by the paths to them, which showed plainly through the water. Wherever the willows grew closely to the water's edge fcr some distance there would be roads through them at frequent intervals, the sterns gnawed oiï, and the weeds trodrien down smooth. " Busy as a beaver" acquires a new forcé when we think how ceaselesslyhe must work toget his daily food, collect winter stores, keep his house in order, repair his and guard against enemies. We saw none of the animáis themselves. They are rarely seen by any one, being able to detect your approach by the jar of the grouud, if not otherwise, and hide themsèlves. -