THE WATER=RAT OR WATER-VOLE. 



FOR the benefit of the uninitiated, let us first 

 be quite clear on one point that the water- 

 rat or water-vole is quite a different creature from 

 the house-rat, for whose sins this pretty and 

 interesting little animal is often made to suffer. 

 The water-vole belongs exclusively to the river 

 pastures and the bank-burrows. It is often 

 plentiful in towns where the gardens border a 

 river, but it never under any circumstances tres- 

 passes upon the odorous runways of the odious 

 house-rats. Living in earth burrows around which 

 vegetation is green, it seldom, if ever, penetrates 

 the drains, but is a clean-living animal whose 

 habits resemble those of the beaver. It is essen- 

 tially a beast of the water's edge. 



The water-vole is very much smaller than the 

 house-rat. Its fur is denser and deeper ; its head 

 is short and blunt, somewhat like that of a guinea- 

 pig. In fact, the animal is as blunt at one end 

 as the other, and viewed at a distance, as it sits 

 up nibbling a husk held in its delicate forepaws, 

 it looks a strangely oblong little beast. 



The fur of the water-vole varies in shade from 

 mole-blue to hare-brown. Occasional specimens 

 are quite russet. The undercoat consists of fine, 

 blue fur, so close and silken that water does 

 not penetrate it, and the brown shades belong 

 to the outer coat of hair, which is tipped with 

 this pigment. I am inclined to think that as 

 the animal grows older the outer coat the hair, 

 that is, as distinct from the under-fur increases 

 in length, so that the colour with which it is 



