A LITTLE BEAVER 159 



has a burrow in the bank, as a retreat for use in 

 various emergencies. 



Among these are the attacks of man and wild 

 animals, and the rise of water. For the muskrat 

 has not the sagacity in forecasting the seasons 

 which many attribute to him. When he builds the 

 walls of his house thin the winter is as likely as not 

 to be unusually cold. If he builds his dome low 

 and squat, the fall floods will probably drive him 

 to his burrow in the bank; but still the second- 

 hand prophets do not lose faith in him. 



The muskrat is not a builder of dams, but rather 

 a destroyer of them. He will avail himself of the 

 ponds they create, but he has so little compre- 

 hension of their purpose that he will undermine 

 them with his burrows. Then some fine afternoon 

 he will awake to find the pond has run away, and 

 left nothing in its place but a mud flat with a thin 

 stream meandering through; and he will wonder at 

 the cause of the disaster. After faring sumptuously 

 for a few days on the stranded dying mussels, he 

 will journey in quest of fresh under- water pastures. 



As there are hermit beavers, so there are hermit 

 muskrats, disappointed or misanthropic old fellows, 

 who seek seclusion from their kind in some remote 

 pool or small brook. Here the hermit fives in com- 

 parative safety from his worst enemy, man, gather- 

 ing generous subsistence in summer from the sedges 

 of the waterside and the green things of fields, the 



