MUSKRATS 221 



season, plucked, dressed, and dyed a rich brown-black, it is 

 sold by the fur trade as seal, French seal, electric seal, Red 

 River seal, Hudson seal, mink and sable. The price of raw 

 skins in London has risen from 15 to 90 cents. From 1907 

 to 1909 the average annual catch of Muskrat skins in North 

 America was about 8,000,000! 



Muskrats that inhabit streams with high banks do not 

 trouble themselves to build houses, but merely burrow into 

 the banks. In rivers and ponds with low margins, however, 

 they gather coarse grass, reeds and mud, and build dome- 

 shaped houses, about 5 feet in diameter, which rise from 2 

 to 4 feet above the water. All such houses are entered 

 below the surface of the water, so far down that ice does 

 not close their doors, and within there is a floor raised well 

 above the water, on which the inmates eat their food and 

 sleep. 



When too many captive Muskrats are kept in the same 

 enclosure, say twelve in a fenced pool 30 feet square, they 

 fight viciously, and not only kill each other, but sometimes 

 partly devour one of the victims. Although often disputed, it 

 is nevertheless a fact that they eat flesh on very slight prov- 

 ocation. They are very unsatisfactory animals to keep in 

 captivity, no matter what the conditions may be. 



The Hudson Bay Lemming 1 is worthy of special notice, 

 because it is the most widely distributed and noteworthy rat- 

 like animal of the far North. It is strictly a mammal of the 

 cold northland, and like many other arctic animals, its win- 

 ter coat is pure white, and its fur is dense and warm. Among 



1 Dicrostony.v hudsonvus. 



