CHAPTER VII
LIFE IN THE WATER WORLD
We have followed the fortunes of Shaggycoat so long that the reader will be interested to know just how he looked, as he swam away into his water world on this warm spring morning.
He was three years old and his weight was already about thirty-five pounds. When he was fully grown, he would weigh fifty-five or possibly sixty pounds. His length was about forty inches, and he would add five or six more to it before he got his full size.
His head and body would then be two feet and three quarters or three feet of his length, and the other foot would be the queerest kind of a paddle shaped tail you ever saw. It was five inches broad at the widest place, and instead of being covered with fur, like the rest of the beaver's body, it was covered with a tough, scaly skin, that gave it quite a fishy look.
It was believed by the ancients that the beaver's tail was fish, and the rest of him was flesh, thus it was lawful to eat the beaver's tail on fast days, when they could not eat meat.
If Shaggycoat had lifted his head out of the water and looked at you as he swam, you would have seen that it was rather small and flat, and that his ears which were small even for the head, nestled down in his fur so that they could hardly be noticed. If you could have examined him near-by, you would have seen that the entrance of each ear was guarded by a fur-covered water pad, which the beaver can close at will and keep the water from his ears. This is very important as he lives so much of the time in the water.
The fact is noticeable all through nature, and particularly in the study of animals, that whenever an animal has need for a peculiar organ, or a peculiar sense, it has been given him.
Sometimes, it is a specially warm coat to shield him from the cold, as in the case of the beaver or otter. Again it will be a long bill, with which to bore in the mud for worms, like that which whistle-wing, the woodcock, possesses; or perhaps it is a stout beak, which can bore into the heart of oak or maple, as the woodpecker does. Wherever there is a peculiar need in nature, there is always a peculiar organism to supply it.