272 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



that only steal a few kernels of corn" investigate their habits carefully for a 

 year, and he will be very apt to conclude that meadow-mice are a kind of farm 

 stock that are " hardy and excellent breeders," but rather expensive to keep. 

 It may be, he will think it best to forbid killing, too, on his farm the prairie 

 hawk^, owls, and shrikes, as well as harmless snakes. 



Before dismissing the destructive family Muridce, it will be proper perhaps 

 to mention some of the methods that have been adopted on the farm for their 

 destruction, or to prevent their ravages. Numerous traps have been devised, 

 some of them ingenious and effective. Of these, the best I have seen — one 

 for barns and granaries and another for the fields — are as follows : Place a 

 baup;l half full of water beneath a trap-door in the floor of buildings infested 

 with these animals, so that the top of the barrel will be just on a level with the 

 floor ; around this scatter grain or meal at night, and by morning numbers 

 will have fallen in and been drowned. In the fields and nurseries where they 

 abound, a trap made on the favorite Scotch plan is very effective. Dig in the 

 earth at the beginning of cold weather short trenches four feet wide at the 

 bottom, and three feet wide at the top, and about four feet deep ; the ends in- 

 clined at the same angle as the sides. The earth walls of these trenches after 

 becoming frozen, are impassable to mice that have fallen in, as they will in 

 great numbers. I am informed by a Scotch gardener, that he has killed 

 upwards of nine thousand in one winter in this manner. 



Diff"erent poisonous preparations have been used with eff'ect on these vermin. 

 The following are among the best : two ounces of carbonate of barytes mixed 

 with one pound of suet or tallow ; place portions of this within their holes and 

 about their haunts. It is greedily eaten, produces great thirst, and death 

 ensues after drinking. This is a very eff'ective poison, as it is both tasteless 

 and odorless. Mix one ounce of finely powdered arsenic and one ounce of lard 

 with meal into a stiff" dough ; put it about the haunts of the rats ; they will eat 

 it greedily, and it makes them so thirsty that they will die near the water, of 

 which they drink until they burst. Other effective poisons are composed as 

 follows : make a paste of one ounce of flour, one-half gill of water, one drachm 

 of phosphorus ; or, two ounces of lard, half a drachm of phosphorus, and. one 

 ounce of flour ; or, one ounce of flour, two ounces of powdered cheese-crumbs, 

 and one-half a drachm of phosphorus ; add to each of these mixtures, if con- 

 venient of access, a few drops of oil of rhodium. Mix into a paste or pills, and 

 scatter about the fields and nurseries. Or, two ounces of finely powdered ar- 

 senic, two ounces of lard, ten drops of oil of rhodium, mixed with flour or meal 

 into a thick dough, and pills of it scattered about the orchards and nurseries. 



In the family HijstriccdcB are comprehended the porcupines, &c. Of these 

 we have but two species included in the genus Erethizon ; they are the white- 

 haired or Canada porcupine, E. dorsatus, (Cuv.,) and the yellow-haired porcu- 

 pine, E. cpixanthus, (Brandt.) These animals are not numerous or troublesome ; 

 they are injurious only in destroying trees, of which they eat the bark and leaves. 

 Sometimes these trees are found stripped almost entirely of bark, and it is said 

 that a single porcupine will thus denude a hundred trees in a season. They 

 alno eat fruits and vegetables, but not to any great extent. 



In the family Epporidcn are included our rabbits and hares. Their charac- 

 teristics are : long and erect ears ; large and prominent eyes ; four incisors in 

 the upper, and two in the lowor jaw ; the two middle ones in the upper jaw 

 much the largest ; posterior limbs long and strong, adapted to leaj)ing ; anterior 

 feet five-toed ; posterior feet four-toed ; tail short or wanting. Some of the 

 animals in this family are injurious in gardens and nurseries to an extent hardly 

 appreciated. I have known acres of peas to be destroyed in a few weeks when 

 situated near small swampy wood3, in which these animals for the most part 

 reside. Fruit trees are often injured by them, sometimes seriously, by their 

 eating the bark in winter from the trunk j cabbage fields are also visited in the 



