The wonders of the animal kingdom. Exhibiting delineations of the most distinguished wild animals in the various menageries of this country / By Robert Huish.

  • Robert Huish
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The wonders of the animal kingdom. Exhibiting delineations of the most distinguished wild animals in the various menageries of this country / By Robert Huish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the building is carrying on. Tiiese piles they sink in the ground, and interweave the branches with the larger stakes. In order to dress these stakes and put them in a situation nearly perpendicular, some of the beavers raise the thick end against the margin of the river, or against the cross-tree, while others plunge to the bottom, and dig holes to receive the points that they stand on end. While some are labouring in this manner, others bring earth, which they place with their feet and beat firm with their tails. They carry the earth in their mouths and with their fore-feet, and transport it in such quantities that they fill all the intervals between the piles with it. The stakes facing the under part of the river are placed perpendicularly, but the rest of the work slopes upward to sustain the pressure of the fluid, so that the width of the bank is reduced to two or three feet at the top. When any breaches are made in the bank by sudden inundations, they lose no time in repairing them as soon as the water subsides. The dwelling-places of these curious animals are cabins built upon piles, near the margin of the pond, and have two openings, one for going out on land, and the other for throwing themselves into the water. The form is either ov.al or round, varying in size from four to eight or ten feet in diameter. Some of them consist of three or four stories, and the walls are about two feet thick, raised perpendicularly upon planks, which serve both for foundations and floors to their houses. Tliey arc impenetrable to rain, and resist the most impetuous winds. The partitions arc covered with a kind of stucco nicely plastered, and each cabin has its own magazine of winter food, proportioned to the number of its inhabitants, who have all a common right to the store. Some villages are composed of twenty or tw'cnty-five cabins, but these large establishments arc rare, and the common republics seldom exceed ten or twelve families, of which each has her own quarter of the village, her own magazine, and her separate habitation. They allow no strangers to locate in their neighbourhood. The smallest cabins contain two or four, and the largest eighteen, twenty, and sometimes thirty beavers. When any danger apj)roaches, they advertise one another of it by striking their tails on the surface of the water, the noise of which is heard at a groat distance, and resounds through all their habita- tions. Each then takes his j)ost; some plunge into the lake, others conceal themselves within their walls, which no animal will attempt to open or overturn. During the gi'catest ])art of the day they sit up with their heads and j)art of the body elevated, and their posterior parts sunk in the water. They often swim a long way under the ice, and it is then that they ai'c the most easily taken, by attacking the cabin at one side, and at the same time watching at a hole made at some distance in the ice, where they are obliged to repair for the purpose of respii-ation. The females bring forth in the end of winter, and generally produce two or three young at a birth. About this time they are left by the males, who retire to the country, in order to enjoy the pleasures and the beauties of the spring. They return occasionally to their cabins, and are occupied in nursing, protecting, and rearing their young, who at the expiration of a few weeks are in a condition to follow their dams. The females, in their turn, make little excursions to recruit themselves in the air, by eating fresh bark and herbage; and in this manner they pass the summer ujjon the waters and in the woods. They do not assemble again till autumn, unless the bank or eabins are overturned by inundations. The animals in the Zoological Gardens appear perfectly reconciled to their state of comparative cajj- tivity, and are become so tame as to accept a biscuit, or any other article of food which is offered to them, with the greatest docility.