44 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. 



I once partook of the hind-quarters of this animal roasted, 

 which I thought more deHcious than any meat I had ever 

 tasted. The tail is a particular delicacy ; it is almost 

 wholly composed of fat. Beaver skins are usually sold 

 by weight. 



C. — The Musk-rat (Arvicola Zibethicus) is much like 

 . the beaver ; is it not ? 

 A F. — So much that Linnaeus, in one of his editions of 

 Systema Naturae, placed it in the same genus. Its skin 

 has a very pleasant smell of musk, which it retains long 

 after death ; the fur is so much like that of the beaver, 

 as scarcely to be distinguished from it. It may often be 

 seen in our rivers in summer, in the banks of which it 

 burrows. We perceive that the most valuable 



furs are the productions of the colder climates : and this 

 is but one instance of the beneficence of God, in giving to 

 every habitable country some compensation in itself for its 

 peculiar inconveniences. While we find no spot on earth 

 to be a paradise, a place of unmixed repose and pleasure, 

 no land is altogether cheerless and desolate ; and this dis- 

 tribution of gifts is made with a far more equal hand than 

 we at first suppose. Some countries which are eminent 

 for fertility, for luxuriance of vegetation, or beauty of 

 scenery, are balanced by political restrictions, unhealthi- 

 ness, or the languor and inactivity caused by heat. Others 

 are cold and sterile, but have a pure and salubrious air, 

 and are possessed by a free and industrious people. In 

 some, where the inhabitants have a liberal government, 

 and the comforts of a high state of civilization, the many 

 find a difficulty in obtaining an honest livelihood, and al- 

 most an impossibility of gaining independence : in others, 

 the loss of home-comforts, and the privations of the forest, 

 are rewarded by increasing wealth and a certain prospect 

 of competence. 



