58 RAMBLES OF 



the muscles it feeds on are nauseous and bitter, and 

 the roots which supply the rest of its food are gene- 

 rally unpleasant and acrid. Still, we should not 

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

 especially 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 him- 

 self a house for the winter, as our fields and dykes 

 are too often visited. But in other parts of the 

 country, where extensive marshes exist, and musk- 

 rats are abundant, they build very snug and substan- 

 tial houses, quite as serviceable 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 principally 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 informed, by a resident, that 

 the muskrats still built regularly every winter. Per- 

 haps these quadrupeds are as numerous in the vici- 

 nity of Philadelphia as elsewhere, as I have never 

 examined a stream of fresh water, dyked meadow, or 

 mill-dam, hereabout, without seeing traces of vast 

 numbers. Along all the water-courses and meadows 



