Part 13

THE beaver is one of the animals that appear fated to die out under the encroachment of man. It has already all but if not quite, disappeared in Europe, and is rapidly dying out in America, although its final extinction has been greatly delayed by the substitution of silk for beaver skin in the manufacture of hats, whereby the value of the beaver has greatly decreased. In some respects the beaver is the most human of animals. It constructs houses, fells trees, and builds dams, and although it dwells in communities, each family has its own abode, separate and distinct from that of others. The sagacity of the beaver, and its resemblance to man in its actions and gestures, naturally cause it to be held in considerable veneration by the Indians, and it shares with the bear the first place in their esteem, although this feeling in no way prevents them from killing it when opportunity offers. It may be remarked parenthetically as somewhat singular that the Indians, although they have had the beaver always among them, have never taken to the wearing of high hats. It was for its flesh that they hunted it; this was considered one of their greatest dainties. Whether the beaver entertains the same admiration for the sagacity of man as the latter does for that of the beaver, is a point that has not been determined. There can, however, be no doubt that it regards him as a very formidable foe, and that it takes as many precautions to avoid his attacks as it does against those of its chief four-footed foe, the wolverine. It is to avoid the latter that it builds its houses with their entrances well below the level of the water, so that it can go in or out without fear of capture by the way. Against man it adopts another method of defence. It digs holes or caves in the banks of the river below the water level, and here it takes refuge when man attempts to break into its house—in this respect following the example of many primitive peoples, who abandon their dwellings and seek refuge in almost inaccessible caves at the approach of a foe.

As might naturally be expected, the sagacity of the beaver has been exaggerated by report. It was said to be acquainted with the art of pile driving, and to use its tail after the fashion of a mason’s trowel, in plastering and smoothing the exterior and interior of its house. These myths have been dissipated by more accurate observation. The beaver has no natural means of pile driving. Were it to endeavour to drive down a thick pile with its tail, it would injure that organ to a degree altogether incommensurate with the downward impulse it would impart to the pile, and great as its sagacity may be, it has not been able to invent a pile driver worked either by mechanism or by steam. Its dams are formed from the trunks and arms of trees floated down to a shallow point in the stream; here they lodge, others are piled upon them, the boughs interlaced, and stones and clay from the bottom are heaped upon them, until the whole forms a solid mass, capable of resisting the stream even in flood. Where the flow of water is but small, the dam is constructed in a straight line across it; where it is liable to be swollen greatly by rain, it is built in a concave form, so as to break the force of the current. Man himself could not better appreciate the necessities of the situation. In streams where the supply of water is constant it is unnecessary for the beaver to build dams, as the purpose of these is only to maintain the water at a level sufficient to cover the entrance of their houses. Even in these cases the beaver often miscalculates the length of the wolverine’s fore leg, and the latter will lie for hours patiently awaiting the passage in or out of a beaver, and then grasp it under water. That the beaver should allow the wolverine this opportunity detracts somewhat from its character for foresight.

The houses themselves are built much after the fashion of the dams, except that timber forms a smaller proportion of the mass, which is composed principally of mud and stones. Sometimes, especially when circumstances restrict the space available for house building, two or more families will live under the same roof, but each abode has its separate entrance, and privacy is thus preserved.

The beaver bestows no pains whatever upon the furnishing of its house, the interior of which is as bare as that of an Arab tent. There is a platform raised above the level of the water, where the beaver and his family can dry and comb their fur, they being more particular in the latter respect than the human female of the present day, whose tastes lie wholly in the direction of disorder and fuzziness. The habits of the beaver when at home have not been sufficiently studied to enable them to be described with any accuracy, the beaver having a marked objection to such investigations. That they are sociable in their habits is evident by the way in which they will congregate on the roofs of their houses, but whether they visit each other and have entertainments analogous to afternoon tea is unknown. It may be considered probable, however, that the females meet and compare notes as to their families and domestic arrangements; but, as it does not appear that any of the beavers stand to each other in the relation of master and servant, one of the most fruitful topics of gossip must be wanting. The beaver is not, like the otter,—the quadruped whose habits most closely resemble its own,—a fish-eater, but like its distant cousin, the vole, feeds entirely upon vegetables, its favourite diet being the stalk of an aquatic plant which in appearance resembles a cabbage stalk; it will, however, eat almost anything in the way of vegetables. In captivity its tastes become modified, and it will, like the dog, accommodate itself to circumstances, and eat meat, pudding, or anything else that its master may be taking. It is very easily tamed, and becomes extremely affectionate and attached to those around it.

As may be expected, nature in making the beaver a builder furnished it with teeth of extraordinary hardness and wonderful cutting powers. These are composed of an extremely hard coat of enamel, the rest of the tooth being of a comparatively soft substance, whereby a cutting, chisel-like edge is obtained: the enamel growing as fast as it is worn away by use, a sharp edge is constantly maintained. So excellent a cutting instrument is it, that the Indians in the days before iron was at their disposal used to fix beaver teeth in wooden handles with which to cut bone and fashion their horn-tipped spears. The beaver can cut down trees of ten inches in diameter. It sits upon its branches like a squirrel while performing the work, and always makes one side of the cut a good deal higher than the other, by which means it is able to make the tree fall in any desired direction with an accuracy as great as that of the cleverest woodman.

It is a pity that the beaver has not been domesticated in this country, for a colony at work would be a most interesting feature in a park, and the young would furnish most amusing pets. Like many other animals, beavers when at work always place one of their number on guard, and the approach of danger is indicated by a loud-sounding flap of the broad tail. This tail, as the beaver climbs over its house in the course of construction, doubtless aids in smoothing down the surface, and they occasionally give a flap with it, but there is no reason for believing that it is used by them for the absolute purpose of plastering. It is much to be regretted that so interesting an animal is rapidly disappearing from the face of the earth.

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THE SQUIRREL.

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AMONG quadrupeds there is none that appears to enjoy its life more heartily, and to exhibit so much playful gaiety of disposition, as the squirrel. It is the type of liberty and freedom, of an airy joyousness, bound down neither by rule nor method, an incarnation of Bohemianism, and an existence free from labour, care, and restraint. The bird may have as joyous a life during the summer, but in winter its lot, if it tarry in northern climes, is a hard one indeed, while if it migrate south it has a long, arduous, and perilous journey to undertake, a journey to which countless thousands fall victims. The squirrel is free from these vicissitudes. In summer he frisks and frolics among the foliage of the woods, and during winter he sleeps away the time, snugly ensconced in the hollow of a tree, waking up only occasionally to feed upon the hoard of nuts or grain that he has providently stored away in anticipation of that time.

That the squirrel, with its pretty ways, its alertness, its activity, its bright eyes, soft coat, and bushy tail, has not become one of man’s greatest pets is due to the squirrel itself. However tame and affectionate it may become—and it is capable of becoming both in a high degree—it is given to sudden alarms, and will then on an instant make its teeth meet in the hand that holds it, the effect being similar to that which would be produced by four small chisels being driven into the flesh. It may be assumed that the squirrel has no direct intention of giving pain, but the result unfortunately does not depend upon the intention, and even a ferret requires no more careful handling than does a squirrel. This peculiarity of the squirrel has militated to prevent any close affection and friendship between it and man, and has been the main reason for man’s allowing it to go its own way and to enjoy its life in its own fashion.

In this country the squirrel does not multiply to an extent that would render it a scourge and a nuisance where it abounds. It may do some damage by gnawing young shoots and buds of the trees, and the woodman may therefore be compelled to wage war against it, but the farmer does not reckon it in the list of his enemies, and upon the whole the squirrel lives its life unmolested. This is not so in the Western States of America, where the squirrel is among the most troublesome of the farmer’s foes, causing terrible depredations among his crops. The variety there is not attired in the warm brown coat of its British cousin, but is striped black and grey like a tabby cat, and is a good deal larger than the English variety, with a magnificently large and bushy tail. So numerous are they in some parts, that upwards of a hundred thousand have been killed in the course of a year on a single estate.

Nature has been extremely bountiful to the squirrel in the matter of his allowance of tail, no other quadruped approaching him in this respect. The tail of the kangaroo may be as long in proportion, but from the hair being short and smooth it makes but little show, and is altogether lacking in the dignity of that of the squirrel; it is, too, extremely deficient in grace, being held out stiffly in rear, while the squirrel manages his as gracefully as a grand dame of the court of Louis XIV. managed her train. It is greatly to the credit of the squirrel that, adorned as he is by this exceptionally fine and bushy appendage, he does not, like the peacock, the turkey, and the bird of paradise, put on side in consequence; but except for the pains he takes in cleaning it and keeping it in the best possible condition, he seems to place no store on this his chief personal adornment. It is not quite clear what was the object of nature in thus endowing the squirrel, as we have been taught every organ has its special functions, and if one is abnormally enlarged it is because such enlargement was either essential to the safety of the individual, acted as a protection against his foes, or enabled him more easily to procure his food. But it is not very clear that any of these objects are served by the tail of the squirrel. He has few enemies, and although undoubtedly a long tail adds to the quickness with which an animal can turn, the squirrel has less occasion for extraordinary speed in this respect than have many other creatures who need it to elude the pursuit of their foes. But given the length of tail, its bushiness is probably an advantage to the squirrel, as it adds so very greatly to its bulk as to much reduce its specific gravity, and thus enables it to drop from bough to bough with almost the lightness of a descending feather. In point of speed, the squirrel is for its size probably the swiftest of quadrupeds, its movements being so rapid that the eye can hardly follow them, and for a short distance it would need a very swift dog to overtake it. With so many advantages in the way of speed, activity, and grace, in addition to those of its very handsome appearance, it is surprising that the demeanour of the squirrel affords no indication whatever that it has a particularly good idea of itself.

It is brimful of life, fun, and overflowing vitality; it delights in testing its powers, and exercises itself to the fullest for the mere pleasure of the thing. Kittens and puppies similarly amuse and enjoy themselves, but no other animal maintains through life the same love of hard exercise for its own sake as does the squirrel. Although so gay and sprightly, the squirrel is—unlike some bipeds of similar disposition—an excellent husband, faithful, domesticated and constant. He and his wife pair not for a season only, but generally for life. After choosing a suitable home in the hollow of a tree, they snugly establish themselves there, bring up their families, store it with nuts and grain for the winter, line it with dry moss, and convert it into one of the most cosy of abodes.

The squirrel is gifted with a large share of curiosity; he takes a lively interest in all that is going on around him, and appears to be particularly interested in man. When walking or driving through districts in the United States where the squirrel abounds, scores of these little creatures will leap up on to fallen trunks of trees, rails, or other vantage points by the side of the track, and watch the coming passenger, and will not move until he is within a few paces of them, unless, indeed, he is armed with a gun, in which case they, as well as birds, soon come to understand that he is dangerous. The squirrel, like the rat, is excellent eating, although even where he abounds many persons have as great a prejudice against eating it as the ordinary English farmer would have against that real delicacy, a rat pie. Hunters, however, who shoot it for its skin highly appreciate its flesh, their only regret being that there is not more of it. The squirrel should never be kept in captivity; it is as gross an act of cruelty to confine it as it is to cage a skylark. If it is a punishment to man to be kept in a cell, how great must be the pain to a creature so restless, so full of life and activity, so happy and joyous in its freedom, as the squirrel. The result, as might be expected, is that, however well its wants may be attended to, in the great majority of cases it speedily pines and dies. If kept at all, it should be in a roomy aviary, enclosing shrubs and parts of trees of a sufficient size to enable it to indulge to some extent in its natural habits.

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THE FLEA.

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WHILE great pains are devoted to the breeding of horses, cattle, and sheep among animals, to that of several kinds of birds, and to the propagation of fish, the flea has been left to shift for itself, and has managed to thrive. Whether the flea was, in the first place, an inhabitant of all terrestrial portions of the globe, or whether, starting from a common centre, it speedily spread itself over the earth, is a point which has not been decided; but the habits of the flea admirably fit him as a traveller; he is a natural stowaway, and being able to subsist for a long time without nourishment, he can perform the longest journeys without inconvenience among the other belongings of the traveller to whom he has temporarily attached himself. At the same time, he manages if possible to become the personal attendant and companion of his fellow-voyager for the time being, and to carry, as it were, his food as well as his lodging with him. So constant are these migrations, so assiduous are fleas in their attachment to man, that it is computed that even if they started as distinct nationalities constant intermixture must have so leavened them that the whole race is now practically homogeneous, and speak a language common to all. Although partial to comfort, and occasionally taking up his abode in the warm and cosy dwellings of the rich, the flea is by no means particular, and makes himself equally at home in the tent of the Arab, the hovel of the Mexican, the snowhouse of the Esquimaux, the cottage of the Spaniard, or the hut of the Persian. He will exist in the sand, and wait patiently for the chance passage of something he can devour; but his preferences lie in the direction of crowded tenements, and the dirtier and more untidy the better. The flea rivals the dog in his affection for man; he will cling to him to the last, and anger and even execrations do not shake his attachment. He is of a lively disposition, and there is nothing that he enjoys more than being hunted, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, showing himself occasionally to inspire his eager pursuer with hope, and then disappearing into air. With other creatures it is generally safe to infer that they will leap forward. The flea, however, is bound by no rules, and can spring backward, forward, or sideways with equal ease. The power of his hind legs is prodigious, and it is well for man that he prefers to remain small, for a flea who took into his head to grow even as large as a cat would be a very formidable creature. It has been calculated by an American man of science that if the mule had the same proportionate power in his hind legs as has the flea, he could kick an ordinary-sized man 33 miles 1004 yards and 21 inches. Mankind has therefore good reason for congratulating itself upon the fact that the flea has not, in the course of his career, had any ambition in the direction of size, and that the smallest and most active only survived in the struggle for existence.

The habits of a flea have not been sufficiently investigated to enable us to state with certainty whether he uses his hind legs as weapons in his contests with other insects; but it is to be presumed that he does so, for why otherwise should Nature have endowed him with so much power in these limbs? If the ordinary mode of progression of the flea were, like that of the grasshopper, by a succession of springs, the prodigious size of his hind legs would be accountable; but, upon the contrary, the flea is essentially a runner, and the speed with which he can make his way through the thick fur of a cat or the hair of a dog is wonderful. It does not appear, indeed, that he ever does take to jumping except when inclined to drive human beings on the search for him into a state of frenzy.

As it cannot be reasonably supposed that Nature gifted the flea with such abnormal saltatory powers merely that he should be a cause of bad language among the human kind, some other explanation must be sought for. The Darwinian theory, that living creatures develop by the survival of the fittest such powers as may be most useful to them, fails altogether here, unless it be supposed that the flea’s legs have developed only since he made his acquaintance with man. In the earlier periods of his history, when he lived in the hair or fur of animals, he could have had no occasion whatever to jump. Unfortunately, the early historians, in dealing with the flea, are silent as to the length of his leaps, and we have, therefore, no means of estimating the rate at which he has progressed in this accomplishment during the last two or three thousand years. Yet, doubtless, he was present at the Siege of Troy, dwelt in the tent of Achilles, and stirred Ulysses to occasional wrath; it would have been well, then, had Homer turned for a moment from recording the struggles of the Greeks and Trojans, and given us a little solid information respecting the flea of those days.

Although abundant everywhere, he is found to be most prolific and numerous in the East. Upon this point all travellers are agreed. Some put it down to the fact that he loves heat; others to his partiality for dirt; while others again go back to the days of the Flood for the explanation. While other animals went into the Ark in pairs, it is morally certain that the flea went in his thousands; and as the four men in charge of all the animals can have had but little time to attend to the flea, and as, so far as is known, insecticide powder was not invented in those days, the flea doubtless multiplied prodigiously during the long voyage. Not knowing what was going on outside, the colony would be taken by surprise when the animals suddenly quitted the Ark; and vast numbers must have been left behind; these must, after the departure of man and the animals from the mountain on which the Ark rested, have shifted for themselves as they best could. Some would have early started on their travels, others would have clung to the Ark until it fell to pieces; but in time, at any rate, they must have scattered over the East, and there, being poor travellers except when carried, they and their descendants have remained ever since. It would be rash to say that this is the only plausible theory. Doubtless others can be advanced; but, taking it altogether, it certainly appears the most probable explanation of the abundance of the flea in Asia, and it may be said in Russia also, and other contiguous countries.

The flea is capable of being tamed, and of affording amusement to man by various little tricks. The first step in the process is to restrain his natural inclination to jump. This is done by placing him in a low, flat box with a glass lid. The flea, supposing that he has an open space overhead, jumps, strikes the glass with great violence, and falls half-stunned. This discourages him, but, unable to account for the phenomenon, he tries again and again, until at last, after some days, he arrives at the conclusion that there is something altogether wrong with the atmosphere, and that jumping must be abandoned. After this the rest is easy. He can be taught to drag a little carriage, to sit on the box, to fire a tiny cannon, or to perform other feats. He never, however, recovers thoroughly from the effect of his terrible blows against the glass. His heart and his spirit appear to be alike broken. Like a caged eagle he mopes out his life, and seldom lives more than a month or six weeks after his education is completed.

His is, in fact, the true gipsy spirit. Free, he will make himself happy under any circumstances, and although he may have his preferences, can get on anywhere. He loves the young and the tender, but does not despise age. Free, he is joyous, lively, and daring: a captive and chained, he pines and dies. It is a pity that no one will do for him what Sir John Lubbock has done for the ant. Such an investigator would no doubt be able to rehabilitate the flea in public estimation. Although he may be forced to live in dirty places, he is himself perfectly clean, taking great pains to clean himself with his hind legs, as does the fly. He is clad in shining armour, which is wonderfully tough and strong; his eyes are lively and prominent. Even in his most joyous moments he is never noisy; his attentions to man are unwearied, and the gentle irritation thereby caused affords means of occupation and excitement to the lazy mendicant, the indolent native of the South, and the contemplative Oriental, and rouses them from the lethargy in which they might otherwise sink. Fully and properly understood, the flea might take high rank among the benefactors of man.

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THE MOSQUITO.

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THERE is nothing in the appearance of the mosquito to excite alarm even in the most timid breasts, no sign of his almost diabolical nature, or of his power of making himself obnoxious. And yet he is endowed with a subtlety, a malice, and a fiendish thirst for blood unparalleled save in the leech. The mosquito is found in almost every climate and country, sounding his trumpet as vehemently by the shores of the Arctic Sea as beside a sluggish stream on the Equator, the British Islands being almost alone in their happy immunity from its presence; and among all the varied blessings for which a Briton has cause to be thankful there is scarcely one so peculiar and so marked as the absence of this creature. It is probably seen at its worst in the north of Russia, Norway and Sweden, and in some of the Northern States of America. In these countries it is hardly safe to leave a horse out at night, for although we may safely discredit the legends that horses have been carried off bodily by mosquitoes, these animals have undoubtedly been killed by the poisonous bites of their innumerable foes. It is the methods of the mosquito rather than the injury it inflicts that drive men to madness. It is not that they are greatly grudged the drop or two of blood they extract, and the pain and inflammation of the wound, though often considerable, are not very much more so than those of our own midnight assailants, the bug and the flea. If they would but come and have their meal in peace and quiet, man might bear it. It is their shrill trumpeting, their approaches and departures, and the long and agonising suspense that precedes the moment when, their investigation complete, they fix on what appears to them the most penetrable point, settle, and begin their meal, that cows the spirit of the bravest man. Heroes who would face the spring of an infuriated tiger, and lead a column to the cannon’s mouth, will quail and cover their head with the sheet when they hear the shrill challenge of the mosquito.