The winners in life's race

by Arabella B. Buckley

Fig. 59.

The Beaver,[142] a gnawing water-animal.

But the insect-eaters have no water-animal to match the Beaver in sagacity, judgment, or engineering. For here we have a creature not much larger than a good-sized cat, cutting down trees, dragging logs six feet long to the water’s edge, and building with them the most elaborate log-houses and water-dams. With hind feet webbed up to the claws, and his broad tail as a rudder, the beaver has so much swimming power that his fore legs are free to carry and place the wood, while his broad orange-coloured teeth, as sharp as chisels, which grow as fast as he wears them away, are his cutting instruments. With them he gnaws a deep notch in the trunk of a larch or pine or willow, as deep as he dares without fear of its falling, and then going round to the other side, begins work there till the trunk is severed and falls heavily on the side of the deep notch, and therefore away from himself. Then, after stripping off the bark and gnawing the trunk into pieces about six feet long, he uses his fore-paws and his teeth to drag them into position to build his dam. The lighter branches he uses to make his oven-shaped lodge, laying them down in basket-work shape, plastering them with mud, grass, and moss, and lining the chambers with wood-fibre, and dry grass; and the logs he piles up to form dams, lest at any time the stream should flow away and leave the entrances to his home dry. These dams are very skilfully and cunningly formed. He always makes the deep notch in the trunk on the side near the water, so that the tree in falling comes as near as possible to the stream; then he does not always clear away all the branches, but he and his companions place the logs with these lying down the stream, so that they act as supports to resist the current and prevent the dam being washed away. Thus they make a broad foundation, sometimes as much as six feet wide, and upon this they pile logs and stones and mud till they have made a barrier often ten feet high and more than a hundred feet long.

In this way they clear the woods just round their stream, as if a whole gang of wood-cutters had been there at work; and as the dams check back the water and form broad meres, there are soon swamps on all sides, where peat moss grows and “beaver-meadows” are formed.

Here the beavers live in companies, each in his own chamber with his wife and family, though underground passages often lead from one to the other, and when water-plants and soft bark are scarce, they will often travel some way inland to feed on fruits and grain. But if among the community any are lazy or will not take partners, they are driven out, to find a refuge in holes of the river-banks, where they sulk alone.

In Western Europe, indeed, where they have been so much persecuted, most of the beavers live alone in holes, though communities are still left in parts of Germany, Scandinavia, and Siberia. But in North America they still carry on their true communal life, and those who visit their wonderful settlements will not be surprised to learn that they possess the largest brain for their size of any of the gnawing animals.

Indeed, they would have no rival among rodents if it were not for the clever sagacious rats, and these have probably sharpened their wits by living so long in contact with man, for they are burrowers chiefly in human dwellings, granaries, stables, mines, ships, and every available dwelling-place where they can rob and plunder, and outwit even man himself by working their way into his stores, and acting together in carrying away his goods.

So the insect-eaters and rodents hold their own both by land and water, penetrating, in the forms of bats and mice even to Australia, though the rodents are most widely spread, for except two very rare animals[145] in the West Indian Islands, there are no Insectivora except bats in South America. The bats, however, remind us that both these groups have also found homes above the ground and in the trees. There the rodents have the lovely little Squirrels, which, with their brown red backs, white waistcoats, and graceful bushy tails, scamper up the trees of our English woods. It is very tempting to dwell upon the squirrel, with his little wife, to whom he remains faithful all his life, his beautiful round nest, in which his young are so carefully reared, and his pretty ways as he sits upright gnawing beechnuts or acorns, holding them in his tiny hands. He has made good use of his opportunities, being almost as widely spread as the rat, for there are squirrels of some kind all over the world, wherever there are forests, except in Australia. Several of them in the East and North America have folds of skin at the side of the body, which, when tightly stretched, by extending the four limbs, enable them to take flying leaps from tree to tree (see [Fig. 60]). Even without flying, however, the squirrel is so nimble that he manages well to escape his enemies, except some of the birds of prey and the fierce tree-marten and wild cat; and as in cold countries he sleeps soundly in snug holes of a tree till the leaves grow again to give him shelter, he is not often detected even by these.

Fig. 60.