54 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Feb. 



The number of young produced at a birth varies from four to 

 seven, and it is by no means uncommon for a female to have three 

 litters in a year ; and well for the musk-rats is it that nature has 

 given them such powers of increase. Their enemies are legion. 

 Birds of prey are ever watching for them ; indeed, it is difficult 

 to save a trapped rat from the feathered banditti, ready on the 

 shortest notice to tear the prisoner from the iron teeth of the trap- 

 per's snare. 



The robber gang of weasels are untiring foes, hunting the rats 

 night and day on the land and in the water. Their greatest 

 enemy, however, is the trapper, be he red Or white man. Five 

 hundred thousand musk-rat skins were at one time annually 

 imported from the Hudson Bay Company's territories. At the 

 last fur sale in Fenchurch Street, in August, 1865, 93,787 skins 

 of musquash were sold — a small proportion only of the yearly 

 supply. The fur is used for various purposes, the bulk finding- 

 its way to foreign markets. The musk glands furnish the power- 

 ful, pungent odour from whence the animal derives its name, not 

 to my nose the least like commercial musk. In the spring musk- 

 rats really scent the air, and at this time the tails are taken off 

 the trapped skins, tied in bundles, dried, and eventually sold in 

 the bazaars at Constantinople, for ladies wherewith to perfume 

 their cloths. The two glands are situated close to the base of the 

 tail. Indians, white traders, trappers and settlers alike devour 

 the muk-rat's body. To cook it secundem artem, after skinning, 

 the glands should be carefully removed ; the body, split and 

 gutted, is skewered on a long, peeled wand, and carefully grilled 

 over a brisk camp-fire. 



There are various modes of trapping musquash. If by steel 

 trap, the trap is usually placed on a log, in the rat's water way, 

 about four or five inches below the surface, with a bait suspended 

 over it. In trying to reach this seductive morsel the hind feet 

 are secured in the iron snare, which has a long string and cedar 

 log float attached, to mark its whereabouts, as the prisoner drags 

 it on the muddy bottom of a stream, or the deeper water of the pools. 

 Others are caught in a kind of figure-of-4 trap, but by far the 

 larger number are speared. The food of the musquash is of most 

 varied character ; in the summer, grass, roots of marsh plants, the 

 green bark from the young cotton-wood trees, and the stalks of 

 succulent vegetation, constitutes their general fare. Though 

 rodents, and in a measure vegetarians, they never refuse flesh if it 



