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AUDUBON'S Quadrupeds
AMERICAN 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 rational, 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 phoilosophy, a proneness in a greater or less degree to superstition, or at least credultiy. 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....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 three-fourths 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." Vol. 1, p. 349. Virtual Exhibits -- Special Collections & Archives -- Nimitz Library -- USNA Comments or Suggestions? |