MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. IO5 



Type locality. — Eastern Canada. 



Faunal distribution. — The muskrat has been recently separated into several 

 races so that the original zibethicus is now restricted to eastern N. America 

 from the Rocky Mountains to (not including) Labrador and Newfoundland, 

 and the Atlantic Ocean, and from Georgia and Louisiana to the Arctic zone. 



Distribution in Fa. and N. J^. — Omnipresent in all situations where there 

 is enough water to float it. 



Habits, etc. — This animal is rightly regarded as a great nuisance by those 

 who have the care or ownership of artificial water embankments, because of 

 its extensive and persistent burrowing. Owing to its aquatic habits, wariness 

 and prolific breeding, it defies extermination in the most populous regions. 

 Were it not for the value of its fur and meat, which latter is largely consumed 

 by those who trap it and by the negroes and Italians, it would speedily be- 

 come a pest in some districts. Some of the Canal Companies of Pa. and 

 N.J. give a bounty on the scalps of muskrats taken on their property besides 

 employing regular trappers to hunt them the year around. In some of the 

 large reclaimed tide marshes of Salem and Cumberland Cos., N. J., the trap- 

 ping of these animals for fur is so profitable that the larger owners of these 

 dyked lands lease the privilege of trapping upon them for considerable sums 

 of money yearly. An examination of the reports of fur dealers in Pa. and 

 N. J. shows that muskrat furs number five times as many as all other kinds of 

 fur put together, with an aggregate value about double that of all the others. 

 The food of the muskrat is rarely secured at the expense of man, being con- 

 fined largely to aquatic vegetation of little use in agriculture. I have known 

 one in severe winter weather to travel overland through deep snow to a corn- 

 crib after grain. They damage some grain and vegetables, but the aggregate 

 amount is trifling. They have been accused of eating fish, and have a habit 

 of gathering mussels from the mud and piling them upon logs and rocks to 

 die. The shell thus opens and the contents are devoured by some animal, 

 presumably the rats, though I have never seen thera do it. No doubt, minks, 

 coons, foxes, etc., participate in this feast. The muskrat, like the beaver, has 

 two distinct classes of homes, the earth burrow and the house or lodge, in 

 either of which they live, but only rear their young in the former. Along 

 swiftly- flowing streams or lakes without extensive marshy tracts the first kind 

 of home is alone practicable, but in tidewater and open swampy areas which 

 are always submerged and inaccessible except by wading or boat, the rats pile 

 up heaps of grass, reeds, mud and sticks to the height of 2 or 3 feet and 6 in 

 diameter, making an oven-shaped chamber near the top and entering it from 

 below by two or more waterways leading to the distant bed of the stream. 

 This home generally overtops highest tides and flood, and is often so bulky 

 as to fill a cart. The muskrat gives birth to young at all seasons. Godman 

 states that their lodges are only used in winter and new ones are built each 



