The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-12
BEAVER WAS FIRST
 AMERICAN PIONEER
Intelligent Animal Taught
 Lessons to Settlers
ENRICHED THE LAND
Were Over Hundred Million in United States in Seventeenth Century. How Their Houses Are Built.
 Dig Long Canals

The beaver is the smartest Of all wild animals. He has a mental process which corresponds to the reasoning power of man. Also he is a genuine historical ce- lebrity. No other animal has cut such a figure in the development of the North American continent. says the Milwaukee, Daily News. Our history with the beaver left out would be like Hamlet without Hamlet
 Before the white man came beavers were distributed over North America per haps more widely than any other animal. The beaver population was probably densest to the southwest of Hudson bay and about the headwaters of the Missis- sippi and Columbia rivers. Along the thousands of smaller streams throughou. North America there was colony after colony. dam after dam, in close success sion, sometimes as many as 300 beaver ponds to the mile.
 Beavers Enrich Land
 The beaver population at the beginning of the seventeenth century was upward of 100000,oo0. distributed over the area ot approximately 6000,o00 square miles.
 What the beaver did for this continent in the way of making farm land may be seen in part even at this late day. Many Of the tillable lands of New England were formed by the dams and ponds of the beaver, There are hundreds of valleys in Illinois, Kansas. Missouri, Kentucky and other states whose rich surface soil was spread upon them by the activities of beaver throughout untold generations.
 The majority of dams are made of slep- der green poles, which are placed lengel- wise with the flow for the bottom and set braced with the end upstream a foot or so higher than the downstream end With these there are occasionally used small limhy trees. The large end of the tree is placed upstream and the small bushy end downstream.
 If in current these sometimes are weighed down with mud and stones. Short, stout sticks and long, slender pole 3 are deftly mingled in the dam as it rises The poles overlle and many completed dams inclined. half-closed shears and eompasses of poles. Thus a dam is doublY braced. The weight against il is resisted both by the end-on poles that are parallel to the flow and by those set at an angle to it.
 How Houses Are Built
 Beaver houses that are built in a pond usually stand in three or four feet of water. The foundation is laid on the bot tom of the pond. of the size intended for the house. ard built up solid mass to a few inches above water-level This island like foundation is covered with a crude hemisphere or dome-shaped house, the central portion of the foundation forming the floor of the low-vaulted room, wlT1 a Is inclined hy the thick house walls. In building the house the beaver provides 3 temporary support for the combined roof and walls by pilng in the center of the floor of two-foot mound of mud.
 Over this is placed a somewhat hattened tepee or cono-shaped frame of sticks and small poles These stand on the outer part of the foundation and lean upward with upper ends meeting against and above the temporary support. The beaver then cover the framework with two or three feet of mud, brush and turf, and thus make the walls and the roof of the house. When the outer part of the house is completed they dig an inclined passa ge way from the bottom of the pond up through the foundation into the irregular space left between the supporting pile of mud ard thei walls. And of this space they shape room by clawing off the intruding sticks This represents the most highly developed type of beaver house.
 The room is from one to three feet high and from three to 20 feet across. The bottom Is a kind of burrow and without either door or window. Half buried sticks made a comparatively dry floor, despite the fact that it is only a few inches above the water level.
 In many localities the canals or ditches dug and used by the beaver form their most necessary and extensive works. These canals require enormous labor and much skill In point of interest they even excel the skill displayed in the construc- tion of house and dam. It is remark able that of the thousands of stories con cerning the beaver only a few have men tioned the beaver canals. These are labor saving improvements. and not only en- able the beaver to live easily and safely in places where he otherwise could net live at all, but apparently they allow him to live happily.
 In transporting trees for food supply, water transportation is so much easier and safer than land that wherever the immediate surroundings of the pond are comparatively level the beaver endeavors to lead water out to tree groves by dig ging a canal from the edge of the pond to these groves. The felled trees are by this means easily hoated into the pond. One of the simplest forms of beaver canal is a narrow, outward extension of tho pond. This varies in length from a few yards to lG0 feet more.
 Green Wood Is Winter Food
 AIolHef dfu 1difly common form uI canal is one that is built across low narrow necks of land which thrust out Into large beaver ponds. or on narrow stretches of land around which crooked streams wander.
 The green wood which the beaver uses for his winter food supply is stored in the bottom of the pond. How does he sink 1t to the bottom? There Is an old and oft-repeated tale which says that the beaver sucks the air from the green wood so as to sink it promptly. Another tale has 1t that the beaver dives to the bottom carries with him a green stick. which he thrusts into the mud and it is thus an- chored.
 Apparently the method is & simple one. The green wood stored is almost as heavy as water. and once in the pond it be- comes water-logged and sinks in a shcrt time; however. the first pieces stored are commonly large, heavy chunks, which are forced to the bottom by piling others on top of them Frequently the first few pieces of the food pile consists of entire trnA Itwx.I, Nr3I-