1li4 BEAVER.

convenient size for their consumption at their leisure.

These stores are larger or smaller in proportion to
the number in family. The logs are not thrown up in
one continual pile, but laid one across the other, as
chandlers pile their bars of soap, in order to take out,
with the greater facility but just such a quantity as
they shall want for their immediate consumption, and
those parcels only which lie at the bottom in the water,
and have been duly steeped. This timber is cut again
into small particles, and conveyed to one of their
largest lodges, where the whole family meet to consume
their respective dividends, which are made impartially,
in even and. equal portions.

Such as are used to hunt these animals know perfectly
well that green wood is much more acceptable to them
than that which is old and dry; for which reason they
plant a considerable quantity of it round their lodgments ;
and as they come out to partake of it, they either
catch them in snares or take them by surprise. In
the winter, when frosts are very severe, they sometimes
break a large hole in the ice; and when the beavers
resort thither for the benefit of a little fresh air, they
either kill them with their hatchets or cover the opening
with a large substantial net. After this, they undermine
and subvert the whole fabric; whereupon the beavers,
in hopes to make their escape in the usual way, fly
with the utmost precipitation to the water, and plunging
into the aperture, fall directly into the net, and are
inevitably taken.”