36 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



BANK BUEROWERS. 



TWO KINDS OF MUSKEATS. 



Tlie Indians used to call the muskrat the beaver's 

 younger brother, both because it was smaller, built 

 houses, but not quite so skillfully as the latter animal, 

 and because it resembles the beaver so much in its 

 habits of life. We are apt to accuse the Chinese and 

 several other nations of a repulsive diet because they 

 are said to eat rats, but many folks among our own 

 people eat rauskrats and are very fond of them ; and 

 the muskrat really is, as its name implies, a rat, a 

 water rat, though, to be sure, a very large one, for 

 lie grows to be a foot in length. He occasionally 

 builds himself a house of mud, strengthened and cov- 

 ered with reeds and strips. This house contains a 

 single apartment, from one and a half to two feet in 

 diameter, furnished with a bed of soft grass and 

 sedges, and is entered by a passage that opens under 

 the surface of the water. In this chamber the musk- 

 rat spends the winter. 



A member of still another family — and not only of 

 another family but of another order, which is a much 

 wider distinction — is called a muskrat because it gives 

 out, like the muskrat, a strong, musky odor, and is an 

 aquatic animal. The tail is scaly, like that of a 

 beaver, and flattened up and down (vertically) instead 

 of sideways (horizontally), as in that of the animal 



