56 RAMBLES OF 



thus one be taken going in as well as on coming out. 

 These animals are frequently very fat, and their flesh 

 has a very wholesome appearance, and would probably 

 prove good food. The musky odour, however, prejudices 

 strongly against its use ; and it is probable that the flesh 

 is rank, as the muscles it feeds on are nauseous and bit- 

 ter, and the roots which supply the rest of its food are 

 generally unpleasant and acrid. Still we should not 

 hesitate to partake of its flesh in case of necessity, espe- 

 cially if of a young animal, from which the musk bag 

 had been removed immediately after it was killed. 



In this vicinity, the muskrat does not build himself a 

 house for the winter, as our fields and dykes are too often 

 visited. But in other parts of the country where exten- 

 sive marshes exist, and muskrats are abundant, they 

 build very snug and substantial houses, quite as service- 

 able and ingenious as those of the beaver. They do not 

 dam the water as the beaver, nor cut branches of trees 

 to serve for the walls of their dwellings. They make it 

 of mud and rushes, raising a cone two or three feet high, 

 having the entrance on the south side under water. 

 About the year 1804, I saw several of them in Worrell's 

 marsh, near Chestertown, Maryland, which were pointed 

 out to me by an old black man who made his living prin- 

 cipally by trapping these animals, for the sake of their 

 skins. A few years since I visited the marshes, near the 

 mouth of Magerthy river in Maryland, where I was in- 

 formed by a resident, that the muskrats still built regu- 



