SWIMMERS CONCLUDED 



enced muskrats into establishing themselves 

 about merely temporary ponds which are ordi- 

 narily only damp hollows, and which must have 

 frozen almost to the bottom with the first severe 

 cold weather. Near the middle of one of these I 

 found a newly-made cabin which appeared to be 

 still inhabited when the shallow water surround- 

 ing it became frozen over in November. It was 

 in a little tussocky depression without any per- 

 manent water-supply, and half a mile or more 

 from any regular haunt of the muskrats, though 

 forty or fifty rods away there was an isolated frog- 

 pond, surrounded by cat-tails and rushes, where 

 muskrats are occasionally to be found. 



The males evidently do a good deal of fighting 

 among themselves in the early spring, each ap- 

 parently endeavoring to lacerate the tail of his 

 opponent as severely as possible, this member 

 being the one most frequently injured, in most 

 cases showing at least one ugly cut, and oftener 

 three or four, of a pattern only to be made by 



j8i 



