Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/492

476 skins has now nearly attained its former proportions. Solitary beavers, always males, and known as &quot;old bachelors,&quot; or idlers, are found inhabiting burrows similar to those seen in Europe. These are generally found in the neighbourhood of new townships, and are supposed to be individuals that have remained after the colony had broken up, or that from some cause or another have been expelled from the society of their fellows. The American Beaver, however, is essentially social, inhabit ing lakes, ponds, and rivers, as well as those narrow creeks which connect the lakes together. They generally, however, prefer flowing waters, probably on account of the advantages afforded by the current for transporting the materials of their dwellings. They also prefer deepish water, no doubt because it yields a better protection from the frost. When they build in small creeks or rivers, the waters of which are liable to dry or to be drained off, instinct leads them to the formation of dams. These differ in shape according to the nature of particular localities. Where the water has little motion the dam is almost straight; where the current is considerable it is curved, with its convexity towards the stream. The materials made use of are drift wood, green willows, birch, and pop lars ; also mud and stones intermixed in such a manner as must evidently contribute to the strength of the dam ; but there is no particular method observed, except that the work is carried on with a regular sweep, and that all the parts are made of equal strength. &quot; In places,&quot; says Hearne, &quot;which have been long frequented by beavers undisturbed, their dams, by frequent repairing, become a solid bank, capable of resisting a great force both of ice and water; and as the willow, poplar, and birch generally take root and shoot up, they by degrees form a kind of regular planted hedge, which I have seen in some places so tall that birds have built their nests among the branches.&quot; Their houses are formed of the same materials as the dams, with little order or regularity of structure, and seldom contain more than four old, and six or eight young beavers. It not unfrequently happens that some of the larger houses have one or more partitions, but these are only posts of the main building left by the sagacity of the builders to support the roof, for the apartments, as some call them, have usually no communication with each other except by water. The beavers carry the mud and stones with their fore-paws, and the timber between their teeth. They always work in the night, and with great expedition. They cover their houses late every autumn with fresh mud, which freezing when the frost sets in, becomes almost as hard as stone, and thus neither wolves nor wolverines can disturb their well-earned repose. The favourite food of the American Beaver is the plant called NupJiar lutenm, which bears a resemblance to a cabbage stalk, and grows at the bottom of lakes and rivers. They also gnaw the bark of birch, poplar, and willow trees. But during the bright summer days which clothe even the far northern regions with a luxuriant vegetation, a more varied herbage, with the addition of berries, is consumed. When the ice breaks up in spring they always leave their embankments, and rove about until a little before the fall of the leaf, when they return again to their old habitations, and lay in their winter stock of wood. They seldom begin to repair the houses till the frost sets in, and never finish the outer coating till the cold becomes pretty severe. When they erect a new habitation they fell the wood early in summer, but seldom begin building till towards the end of August. The flesh of the American Beaver is usually eaten by the Indians and the Canadian voyageurs ; and when roasted in the skin it is esteemed a delicacy. It is said to taste like pork. The castoreum of the beaver is a substance con tained in two pyriform sacs, situated near the organs of reproduction, of a bitter taste, and slightly fcetid odour, at one time largely employed as a medicine for derangement of the nervous system, as hysteria, &c., but now little used. Fossil remains of both beavers are found in the Tertiary beds of the continents still inhabited by them, accompanied in each case by remains of an extinct species. The latter appear from their remains to have been much larger than those now existing.  BECCAFUMI,, was a distinguished painter of the school of Siena at the beginning of the IGtli century. In the early days of the Tuscan republics Siena had been in artistic genius, and almost in political importance, the rival of Florence. But after the great plague in 1348 the city declined ; and though her population always comprised an immense number of skilled artists and artificers, yet her school did not share in the general progress of Italy in the loth century. About the year 1500, indeed, Siena had no native artists of the first importance ; and her public and private commissions were often given to natives of other cities. But after the uncovering of the works of Raphael and Michel Angelo at Rome in 150S, all the schools of Italy were stirred with the desire of imitating them. Among those accomplished men who now, without the mind and inspiration of Raphael or Michel Angelo, mastered a great deal of their manner, and initiated the decadence of Italian art, several of the most accom plished arose in the school of Siena. (See articles and .) Among these was Domenico, born about 1488, of a peasant, one Giacomo di Pace, who worked on the estate of a well-to-do citizen named Lorenzo Beccafumi. Seeing some signs of a talent for drawing in his labourer s son, Lorenzo Beccafumi took the boy into his service and presently adopted him, causing him to learn painting from masters of the city. Known afterwards as Domenico Beccafumi, or by the nickname of Mecarino, signifying the littleness of his stature, the peasant s son soon gave proof of extraordinary industry and talent. In 1509 he went to Rome and steeped himself in the manner of the great men who had just done their first work in the Vatican. Return ing to his native town, Beccafumi quickly gained employ ment and a reputation second only, if second, to Soddoma. He painted a vast number both of religious pieces for churches and of mythological decorations for private patrons, many of which are still to be seen where they were executed. But the work by which he will longest be remembered is that which he did for the celebrated pave ment of the cathedral of Siena. For a hundred and fifty years the best artists of the state had been engaged laying down this pavement with vast designs in commesso work, white marble, that is, engraved with the outlines of the sub ject in black, and having borders inlaid &quot;with rich patterns in many colours. From the year 1517 to 1544 Beccafumi was engaged in continuing this pavement. He made very ingenious improvements in the technical processes employed, and laid down multitudinous scenes from the stories of Ahab and Elijah, of Melchisedec, of Abraham, and of Moses. These are not so interesting as the simpler work of the earlier schools, but are much more celebrated and more jealously guarded. Such was their fame that the agents of Charles I. of England, at the time when he was collecting for Whitehall, went to Siena expressly to try and purchase the original cartoons. But their owner would not part with them, and they are now the property of the cathedral works. The subjects have been engraved on wood, by the hand, as it seems, of Beccafumi himself, who at one time or another essayed almost every branch of fine art. He made a triumphal arch and an immense mechanical horse for the procession of Charles V. on his entry into Siena. In his later days, being a solitary liver and con- 