Birds. 1689 



and to which it has access by a hole in the bottom. I have occasionally seen skins of 

 this animal of a fawn colour. Besides this famous supply of musk-rats they had a 

 large pile of wild ducks and teal which they had shot, together with a fine heron. All 

 the Indians looked strong and hearty, in consequence of the abundance of animal food 

 at this season of the year. He informed me that the Coteau du Prairie was a beauti- 

 ful upland country, containing an immense number of small lakes, some of which con- 

 tained well-wooded islands, where the Indians in the season took great quantities 

 of musk-rats. These animals, he assured me, sometimes migrate, and are often met 

 at such times on the prairies in incredible numbers. I have very little doubt of the 

 truth of his statement, for all the American animals, both large and small, possess — 

 what is most probably an acquired intelligence — the sense of bettering their condition 

 by emigrating from districts where their food is becoming scarce. I remember, when 

 in the Indian country in Upper Canada in 1807, meeting with the most surprising 

 quantities of fine glossy black-skinned squirrels, with singularly beautiful bushy tails ; 

 they had spread over an immense district of country, and were evidently advancing 

 from Lake Huron to the south." — Id. 



Habits of the Squirrel. — A few years since, when the Rev. Francis Faithfull, 

 of Hatfield, Herts, was staying with me, we were driving out in a gig, between this 

 village and Broughton, an adjoining parish, and observing some animal, apparently 

 strange, crossing the road which separates two plantations, we pulled up to satisfy our- 

 selves, when we found to our surprise that it was an old squirrel conveying its young : 

 it appeared to hold the neck of the young one in its mouth, while the body seemed-to 

 be wrapped round the neck of the mother like a boa tippet. An instance of the migra- 

 tion of squirrels from one district to another was lately witnessed by my son James, 

 and a friend of his, who were fishing in the river Auxholm. They observed a 

 number of these animals come down to the river's bank from a plantation of the 

 Duke of St. Alban's, in the parish of Ribaldstow, and .without much hesitation 

 five or six of them leaped into the river, and swam across into the parish of Cadney. 

 No doubt the whole of the flock would have followed, but the young gentlemen, 

 astonished at the sight, ran to the spot, when those not already in the river has- 

 tened back to the plantation whence they came. — Henri/ Granther ; Scawley Brigg, 

 February \\th, 1847. 



A curious mode of Bird-catching. — Baron Votie, a colonel of the Austrian service, 

 was very fond of bird-catching, at which he was a first-rate hand ; and as I never 

 heard of his mode in England, and as it may be considered curious by some of my 

 readers, I will describe it. After placing the twigs, he hid himself near the place, and 

 made a loud noise resembling that which is made by an owl when it is caught. The 

 poor little birds, fancying their midnight enemy in trouble or in a trap, flocked in hun- 

 dreds, not to assist him, but to peck his life out. In this way he would sometimes en- 

 trap from fifty to a hundred birds at a sitting, selecting those he wished to keep, and 

 letting the others off.— Dr. Wilson's ' Practice of Water Cure,' p. 32. 



