Muskrat 541 



At my home in Connecticut is a lake with 2 Muskrat 

 famihes at points 200 yards apart. When one family was killed 

 no other Rats were seen in that part of the lake till new tenants 

 came; all evidence went to show that these Muskrats did not 

 go more than 100 yards from home, and rarely that. At 

 another point is a pond about 50 yards long and 10 yards wide. 

 A pair has nested in one end, and though the parents are seen 

 daily, they are never observed at the other end. 



In an Iowa prairie pond about 40 yards by 60, sur- 

 rounded by dry, open country, I saw 8 good-sized rat-houses; 

 one of them seemed to be double, it was so large. In a pond 

 about 30 by 40 yards I saw 3 large rat-houses. In another 

 isolated round pond, 10 yards across and quite alone in a dry 

 region, was one large rat-house. This was on November 28, 

 1905. 



Near Washington, Minn. (November 30, 1905), I saw 15 

 large rat-houses and some smaller beginnings in a pond but 

 30 by 100 yards. The number of houses to the acre seemed to 

 increase as we went northward. 



The pine forest is as unattractive to Muskrats as the dry, popula- 

 open prairie. Their ideal surroundings are found in the great 

 belt of broken poplar woods, marshes, and ponds that extend 

 from Roseau River, across the Province to Dawson Bay, for a 

 width of 70 to 100 miles. In the pine forest region I should 

 estimate the Rat population at not more than 10 to the square 

 mile. In the prairie region there are ponds and sloughs enough 

 to multiply this by 10, and in the great poplar belt, where 

 100 Muskrat families are often found in a 50-acre marsh, 

 there may easily be 10 to the acre. But this is only in the ponds; 

 allowing for the great stretches of dry land and averaging the 

 ponds, I should put the Rat population of Manitoba at not 

 ess than 500,000 in years of fair abundance. 



The Muskrat is more sociable than the Rabbit, but less socia- 



BILITY 



so than the Beaver. Several will join their efforts to produce 

 the rat-house or lodge, and they are always careful to announce 



TION 



