Lady Mary and Her Nurse

The nurse smiled, and said, It is not a fish at all, my dear; it is a dried beaver’s tail. I brought it from the back lakes when I was at home, that you might see it. See, my lady, how curiously the beaver’s tail is covered with scales; it looks like some sort of black leather, stamped in a diaper pattern. Before it is dried, it is very heavy, weighing three or four pounds. I have heard my brothers and some of the Indian trappers say, that the animal makes use of its tail to beat the sides of the dams and smoothe the mud and clay, as a plasterer uses a trowel.