Beavers often sit on the hind-feet and tail, and eat in this posture, holding up the food in their fore-paws. They also walk on the hind-feet, with support of the tail, when they carry materials to their buildings, except brandies, which are dragged. have considerable power in the tail, and not 'infrequently flap it, which has given rise to an opinion, perhaps not altogether erroneous, that they use their tails for plastering their buildings, or beating and adjusting the mud which is employed in them.
Beavers do not usually eat in their lodges, but in holes or burrows in the hank of the river, the entrance to which is from beneath the water, and which thence proceed obliquely upwards. often to a distance of many feet. To these holes the'beavers also flee when their lodge is broken up: and it is therefore a common practice of the B. hunters to break up the B. lodges. that they may take the animals in their boles or vaults. Beavers are also taken by nets and traps.
It is chiefly in winter that beavers congregate together. During summer, they wander about a little. The young are generally produced in April or May, from two to seven at a birth. Their eyes are open when they are born.
Single beavers arc frequently met with, which live apart from all others of their species. All of these are males, which, it is supposed, hare been cr...nquered and driven away by others of their sex.
In the parts of North America where beavers have now beco:ze rare, they live mostly in burrows in the river-banks, like those which are sill, found in Europe. Circum stances prevent them from following out their gregarious tendencies. That the beavers of Europe and Asia construct lodges awl dams, wlien Envy have opportunity of congre gating in sufficient numbers, appears to be no less certain than that those of America do so.
Large glandular pouches, two in number, closely ccnnected with the organs of repro duction, contain the substance called enxtoreuni (n v.' Its uses in the animal economy
are by no means well known; they are probably analogous to those of musk, civet, etc.; but its peculiar pungent odor is so attractive to beavers, that use is made of it as a bait for B. traps.
The B. is very easily tamed; but nn wooden cage will keep one confined. Except in the extraordinary building instincts already noticed, the animal exhibits no remark able sagacity.—The use of the B.'s fur for making hats is well known. Sec HAT. An act of the English parliament, in 1638, prohibiting the use of any other material for hat making, contributed to the rapid dimibutitin of the number of beavers in the parts of North America from which thelr skins were then obtained. During great part of the 18th and the earlier part of the 19th thy number of B. skins annually exported from America appears to have been not less tnan 200,000. It is now greatly diminished, but Is still large. The tlesh of the B. is much esteemed as an article of food by trappers and others who frevent the fur-countries, but it is very oily.
Fossil remains of beavers. apparently of the same species with that now existing, are found in the d.•osits referred by geologists to the pliocene and pleistoeene periods. Other remains are aIAO found of a much larger animal of the B. kind, which must have existed in Europe and Asia along with the present species, but which seems to have become extinct boons the hils.:oric period. They were different, however, not merely in size, but in other so important, that Owen has constituted for the "great B." a distinct genus '..rogootherittin (Gr., a chewing or gnawing beast).
Of existing andnals, tn., most closely allied to the B. is the coypu (q.v.), sometimes called the Chilian B. (nlyonotainus coypus), which yields the fur culled rucoonda (q.v.).