XLI 



THE MUSKRAT 



A LITTLE turning of nature from her 

 own courses banishes the beaver from 

 his primal haunts, but his less renowned 

 and lesser cousin, the muskrat, philo- 

 sophically accommodates himself to the 

 changed conditions of their common fos- 

 ter mother and still clings fondly to her 

 altered breast. 



The ancient forests may be swept 

 away and their successors disappear, till 

 there is scarcely left him a watersoaked 

 log to use as an intermediate port in his 

 coastwise voyages ; continual shadow may 

 give place to diurnal sunshine, woodland 

 to meadow and pasture, the plough tear 

 the roof of his underground home, and 

 cattle graze where once only the cloven 

 hoofs of the deer and the moose trod the 

 virgin mould, yet he holds his old place. 



In the springtides of present years as 

 in those of centuries past his whining 



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