HABITS 



892 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



lower jaw that he could get no hold upon his enemy's throat, 

 when a very short time would decide the battle." 



STORAGE There is a phase of the storage habit that is well developed 



in the Mink, and it must be distinguished from the carrying 

 home of provender for the young. The first illustration at hand 

 is given by Merriam,"* who found by the autumn nest of a 

 solitary old Mink "the remains of a Muskrat, a Red-squirrel, 

 and a downy woodpecker." I should like much to know the 

 three very different chapters of hunting represented by these 

 three captures. 



I have several times run after Mink on the open prairie and 

 found it quite easy to overtake them. From this I should 

 estimate their best speed on land at 7 or 8 miles an hour. 

 Their bounds in ordinary travelling are from 10 to 15 inches 

 clear. Though easily overtaken, catching them is quite a differ- 

 ent matter, for they dodge with marvellous adroitness, and they 

 are quick, too, at reading the little nature finger-posts that tell 

 which way to run for a Badger hole or other haven in the earth. 



On October 3, 1884, while following a Mink through the 

 snow in the Sandhills south of Carberry, I came to where it had 

 tobogganed itself down a long hill, for a distance of 18 feet, 

 after the manner of an Otter. 



On the water I should estimate its best travelling speed at 

 I to I J miles an hour. This is not reckoning the dive or under- 

 water spring that it can and must make to catch fish. It is 

 much swifter than the Muskrat, but apparently cannot dive 

 so far. I once saw a young male Mink hunted down among 

 some floating logs. He might have escaped had he dived and 

 swum fifty feet to the cover along shore, but he did not, ap- 

 parently because he could not swim so far under water. 



H Its strength is illustrated in the following incident: 



While Duck shooting at Swan Lake, Man., October 18, 

 1901, H. W. O. Boger, of Brandon, shot a mallard which fell 



" Mam. Adir, 1884, p. 66. 



