Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/424

400 the author witnessed a singular attack by Wolves on a herd of Antelopes, which he thus describes: —

Major Campion's remarks on the Beaver, its habits, and the mode of trapping it (pp. 147–165) are very interesting, hut too long to be quoted here. The height of the "dam," he says, varies with the rapidity of the streams they are built across, and where the current is last the fall of the water-course is great; and then they require to be high, otherwise the water would not be backed sufficiently lor it to make a pool of adequate size.

" In mountain streams about eight feet is their average height. For instance, suppose you. stood below one regarding it, then the dam would stretch across in your front, from bank to bank, eight feet high, and present a perpendicular face of branches, will) their butt-ends towards you ; these ends varying in size from half an inch to two inches in diameter. This is undoubtedly the right way for the sticks to lie, as is well known by all engineers who have had occasion to make 'brush-dams'; and the reason is obvious, for as the smaller twigs and forks on each branch, when laid in Midi a manner, face the stream, they catch all sediment coming down with the water, which, lodging, helps to make and keep the 'dam' water-tight."

With this extract, we must conclude our notice of Major Campion's book. From the passages above-quoted, the reader will be able to judge not only of the author's style, but also of the sort of information which he has to impart on the Zoology of the country explored by him.