File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17539638473).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo14amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
THE AMERICAN BEAVER isr furnished some of the bea\'er skins shipped on the "Fortune," but it has recently been converted into a cranberry bog and now not even a muskrat is to be found there. In some places, notably in England, the beaver is commemorated by names that have long lost their significance, although in many instances they retain more of their original spelling than one might at first imagine. Such are, Beverege, Be- vere Island, Beverecote and Beverly, the last not being named in honor of Sir John Beverly, but being an evolution of " Before leag " or " Beaver Place." It is necessary to say only a few words about the
Text Appearing After Image:
habits and habitations of the bea- ver, as these are dwelt on at length in every work on natural history.! The beaver is shy and retiring in his habits, as well as nocturnal, and this combination of characters, although conducive to longevity in a state of nature, is not a success in a zoological garden. In order to see the beaver at all he must be kept in a cage, where he not unnaturally sulks ' For the benefit of those who wish to pursue the subject furtlier, a list of the more important or more interesting boolfs and papers is appended: The American Beaver and His Works, by Lewis H. Morgan. Castorologia: or, The History and Traditions of the Canadian Beaver, by Horace T. Martin, F. Z. S. In Beaver World, by Enos A. Mills. The Story of the Beaver, by William Daven- port Hulbert. Haunts of the Beaver, by A. R. Dugmore. Everybody's Magazine, December, 1901. Beaver in the Adirondacks, by H. V. Radford. The earliest picture of the beaver, 1684 and tries to show as little of himself as possible. The structures built by the beaver vary somewhat with his surroundings and his house may either stand in moderately deep water, rest against the bank of a river, or as in the Museum group, be erected on the edge of a pond. While usually built of sticks from which the bark has been removed for food, it may, as in some northern streams where food and building material are abundant, be constructed of unpeeled sticks. In any case, the house chamber is above water and here the beavers pass the winter more or less inactively, and here the young, ' n u m I3 e r i n g from two to five, are born in May. Those who know the animal best look upon the canals constructed for the trans- portation of food supplies as the most remarkable of all his undertakings. Man, with the aid of steam and elec- tricity excavates the Suez and Panama Canals, but the beaver, a creature weighing on an average thirty or forty pounds, with no tools except teeth and paws, digs trenches 150 to 750 feet long and a yard wide and deep. Further than this, in cases where the ground slopes rapidly, the beaver will erect dam after dam, and dig canal after canal until by a succession of steplike levels, the needed food is obtained. The dams also vary and may con- sist mainly of earth, or of sticks packed with earth. As in the dam shown

Note About Images