These beasts used to build them caves or dens near the waters, so as the water may come into them or else they may quickly leap into the water, and their wit or natural invention in building of their caves is most wonderful. For you must understand that in the nighttime they go to land, and there with their teeth gnaw down boughs and trees, which they likewise bite very short, fitting their purpose, and so being busied about this work, they will often look up to the tree when they perceive it almost asunder, thereby to discern when it is ready to fall, lest it might light upon their own pates [heads]. The tree being down and prepared, they take one of the oldest of their company, whose teeth could not be used for the cutting (or as others say, they constrain some strange beaver whom they meet withal) to fall flat on his back (as before you have heard the badgers do), and upon his belly lay they all their timber, which they so ingeniously work and fasten into the compass of his legs that it may not fall. And so the residue by the tail draw him to the waterside, where these buildings are to be framed, and this the rather seemeth to be true because there have been some such taken that had no hair on their backs but were pilled [peeled off], which being espied by the hunters, in pity of their slavery or bondage, they have let them go away free.

These beasts are so constant in their purpose that they will never change the tree that they have once chosen to build withal. How long time so ever they spend in biting down the same, it is likewise to be observed that they never go to the same during the time of their labor but in one and the same path, and so in the same, return to the water again. When they have thus brought their wood together, then dig they a hole or ditch in the bankside, where they underset the earth to bear it up from falling with the aforesaid timber. And so they proceed, making two or three rooms like several chambers, one above another, to the intent that if the water rise they may go further, and if it fall they may descend unto it. And as the husbandmen of Egypt do observe the buildings of the crocodile, so do the inhabitants of the country where they breed observe the beavers, that when they build high, they may expect an inundation and sow [run of water] on the mountains, and when they build low, they look for a calm or drought and plow the valleys.

If one beaver be too weak to carry the log, then another helps him. If they two be too weak, then Multorum manibus grande levatur onus [a major task is made light by the hands of many], four more adding their help, being placed three to three, which set their teeth in one another’s tough tails, and laying the load on the two hindermost, they draw the log to the desired place. That this may not seem altogether incredible, remember that the like almost may be seen in our ants, which will join sometimes seven or eight together in the carrying of a burthen. These creatures build themselves houses of wood and clay, close by the pond’s sides, and knowing the seasons, build them answerable houses, having them three stories high so that as land floods are raised by great rains, as the waters arise, they mount higher in their houses; as they assuage, they descend lower again. These houses are so strong that no creature, saving an industrious man with his penetrating tools, can prejudice them, their ingress and egress being under water. These make likewise very good ponds. Knowing whence a stream runs from between two rising hills, they will there pitch down piles of wood, placing smaller rubbish before it with clay and sods, not leaving till by their art and industry they have made a firm and curious dam-head, which may draw admiration from wise understanding men. These creatures keep themselves to their own families, never parting so long as they are able to keep house together.