152 



principally nocturnal and somewhat gregarious, several pairs construct- 

 ing and occupying the same houses and burrows. These latter are nu- 

 merous and extensive galleries in the banks of ponds, marshes, or 

 sluggish streams. In the burrows the young are usually brought forth, 

 and to them the animals resort when driven from their houses in winter. 

 The .entrance to both the burrows and houses are under water 



The houses are built in water three or four faet deep, out of the cur- 

 rent. They are principally of rushes, although coarse grass, sedges, 

 sticks, and leaves are piled up with tlie rushes, and the whole well 

 plastered together with mud. These houses are built in the fall and oc- 

 cupied through the winter. Sometimes, in wide prairie marshes, the 

 young are brought forth in the houses j'in that case, but one female occu- 

 pies a house. If the water course has dry banks, the burrows are usually 

 at the edge of the water; but in some wide sloughs the burrows are 

 several rods from the water-mark, in some elevated spot; in such cases 

 they are approached by a gallery excavated the entire distance from the 

 water to the burrow under the soil. In the piles of rushes — which some- 

 times are so abundant in a marsh as to suggest, by their large size and 

 well-rounded tops, a crop of marsh grass thrown into bunches ready for 

 the hay wagon — are the chambers occupied by the animal. The entrance 

 may be in the center, when there is a shelf completely around it and 

 above water, on which the Muskrats sleep; again, the entrance is at the 

 Bide — but under water in either case. Qften, in winter, in the large 

 marshes about Chicago, the hunter, sometimes on skates, takes them by 

 thrusting sharp-pronged spears through the top and sides of the houses 

 into the nest. Two, and even three, are taken sometimes in this way at 

 one thrust. 



Muskrats are not suspicious; they are easily trapped in steel- traps 

 placed in their runways. In former years, when the fur was used for 

 napping " beaver hats," Muskrats were worth more than Mink, the skins 

 selling for from forty to fifty cents. Like other furs, their value depends 

 on the caprice of fashion. The introduction of sillc hats, according to 

 Mr. Kennicott, reduced the price of the skins to from six and one-quarter 

 to fifteen cents, and trapping them was almost abandoned as unprofit- 

 able. Of late years they have been in demand for gloves, caps, and some 

 articles of ladies' furs, and have sold at from fifteen to thirty cents. 



The Muskrat comes out on the ice, at times, to sun itself, and in spring 

 may often be seen swimming about, or, like turtles, basking on logs in 

 the sun. The author has seen them shot by duck-hunters, when thus 

 exposed, on the Calumet Eiver, in Illinois. 



The winter food of this species is, according to Mr. Kennicott, the roots 



