any other animal with which we are acquainted. When it is shaken from a tree and falls among grass and shrubbery, or when detected in such situations, it doubles itself into a heap and feigns death so artfully, that we have known some schoolboys carrying home for a quarter of a mile an individual of this species, stating that when they first saw it, it was running on the ground, and they could not tell what had killed it. We would not, how. ever, advise that the hand should on such occasions be suffered to come too familiarly in contact with the mouth, lest the too curious meddler should on a sudden be startled with an unexpected and unwelcome gripe.

The opossum is easily domesticated when captured young. We have, in endeavouring to investigate one of the very extraordinary characteristics of this species, preserved a considerable number in confinement, and our experiments were continued through a succession of years. Their nocturnal habits were in a considerable degree relinquished, and they followed the servants about the premises, becoming troublesome by their familiarity and their mischievous habits. They associated familiarly with a dog on the premises, which seemed to regard them as necessary appendages of the motley group that constituted the family of

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brutes in the yard. They devoured all kinds of food: vegetables, boiled rice, hominy, meat both raw and boiled, and the scraps thrown from the kitchen; giving the preference to those that contained any fatty substance.

On one occasion a brood of young with their mother made their escape, concealed themselves under a stable, and became partially wild; they were in the habit of coming out at night, and eating scraps of food, but we never discovered that they committed any depredations on the poultry or pigeons. They appeared, however, to have effectually driven off the rats, as during the whole time they were occupants of the stable we did not observe a single rat on the premises. It was ascertained that they were in the habit of clambering over fences and visiting the neighbouring lots and gardens, and we occasionally found that we had repurchased one of own vagrant animals.

They usually, however, returned towards daylight to their snug retreat, and we believe would have continued in the neighbourhood and multiplied the species, had they not in their nightly prowlings been detected and destroyed by the neighbouring dogs.

our

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BEAVER.

THE sagacity and instinct of the beaver have

from time immemorial been the subject of admiration and wonder. The early writers on both continents have represented it as a råtional, intelligent, and moral being, requiring but the faculty of speech to raise it almost to an equality, in some respects, with our own species. There is in the composition of every man, whatever may be his pride in his philosophy, a proneness in a greater or less degree to superstition, or at least credulity. The world is at best but slow to be enlightened, and the trammels thrown around us by the tales of the nursery are not easily shaken off. Travellers into the northern parts of Europe who wrote marvellous accounts of the habits of the beavers in northern Europe, seem to have worked on the imaginations and confused the intellects of the early explorers of our northern regions. They excited the enthusiasm of Buffon, whose

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romantic stories have so fastened themselves on the mind of childhood, and have been so generally made a part of our education, that we now are almost led to regret that threefourths of the old accounts of this extraordinary animal are fabulous; and that, with the exception of its very peculiar mode of constructing its domicile, the beaver is in point of intelligence and cunning greatly exceeded by the fox, and is but a few grades higher in the scale of sagacity than the common musk-rat.

The following account was noted down by us as related by a trapper named Prevost, who had been in the service of the American Fur Company for upwards of twenty years, in the region adjoining the spurs of the Rocky Mountains, and who was the “Patroon" that conveyed us down the Missouri river in the summer and autumn of 1843. As it confirms the statements of Hearne, Richardson, and other close observers of the habits of the beaver, we trust that, although it may present little that is novel, it will, from its truth, be acceptable and interesting to our readers. Mr. Prevost states in substance as follows:

Beavers prefer small, clear water rivers, and creeks, and likewise resort to large springs. They, however, at times, frequent great rivers and lakes. The trappers believe that they can

have notice of the approach of winter weather, and of its probable severity, by observing the preparations made by the beavers to meet its rigours; as these animals always cut their wood in good season, and if this be done early, winter is at hand.

The beaver dams, where the animal is at all abundant, are built across the streams to their very head waters. Usually these dams are formed of mud, mosses, small stones, and branches of trees cut about three feet in length and from seven to twelve inches round. The bark of the trees in all cases being taken off for winter provender, before the sticks are carried away to make up the dam. The largest tree cut by the beaver, seen by Prevost, measured eighteen inches in diameter; but so large a trunk is very rarely cut down by this animal. In the instance just mentioned, the branches only were used, the trunk not having been appropriated to the repairs of the dam or aught else by the beavers.

In constructing the dams, the sticks, mud, and moss are matted and interlaced together in the firmest and most compact manner; so much so, that even men cannot destroy them without a great deal of labour. The mud and moss at the bottom are rooted up with the animal's snout, somewhat in the manner hogs