PROFIT FROM THE MUSKRAT 77 
is in the roasting-ear stage. At times, also, 
they have ruined ornamental ponds by eating 
out of them the lilies and similar ‘plants of 
whose bulbs they are fond. But this sort of 
destruction is rarely noticed except in the 
neighborhood of extensive marshes. 
Far more serious, however, is the trouble and 
loss the busy animals occasion by perforating 
the dams and embankments of mill-ponds, 
‘ice-ponds, irrigation ditches and reservoirs. 
Every canal suffers breaks due to them, as well 
as to brown rats, gophers, mice, crayfish and 
moles. In the rice plantations of the Gulf coast 
they are a serious nuisance by cutting the em- 
bankments and flooding or draining the rice- 
fields at the wrong time; and this has resulted 
in Louisiana in laws protecting the alligators 
in some parishes because they kill the rats. 
So ‘serious was the situation in Plaquemine 
Parish, La., in 1908-9, that a general slaughter 
of muskrats took place, and fully half a million 
are said to have been killed. The sale of their 
pelts produced about $100,000. 
Trapping, shooting and poisoning may all be 
made effective to a certain extent against 
