Photo by C. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.
BEAVER.
The beaver here shown was kept as a pet. It was photographed upon a stream in Scotland. The long upper fur is removed when the skin is prepared by the furrier.
Photo by C. Reid] [Wishaw, N.B.
BEAVER.
This is a photograph of a swimming beaver. Note the advantage which it has taken of the eddy in the stream.
The beaver's tail is flattened like a paddle and covered with scales; its hind feet are webbed between the toes; it has sharp claws, which aid it in scratching up mud, and a thick, close fur, with long brown hair above, and a most beautiful and close under-fur, which, when the long hairs have all been removed, forms the beaver-fur of which hats were once made, and trimmings for ladies' jackets and men's fur coats are now manufactured. There are two separate lines of interest in connection with the animal—political and zoological. The value of the fur was anciently such that, when the first French explorers began to search the Canadian lakes, and later when the Hudson Bay Company succeeded to the French dominion, the history of Canada was largely bound up with beaver-catching and the sale of the skins. In the early days of the Company the "standard of trade" of the North-west was a beaver-skin. For nearly a century the northern territories were organised, both under French and English rule, with a view to the beaver trade. The beaver was, and is, the crest of the Canadian Dominion.
