282 MAMMALIA. 



of hut. Here he sits and eats his food, and at the sHghtest noise, or 

 least appearance of danger, disappears in an instant underwater. In 

 the winter these feeding'- phices are readily discovered by a bunch of 

 wadded grass, flag, or sonic other material, about the size of a man's 

 hat, protruding above the ice This little mound is hollow, and is 

 only large enough for a single rat, where he sits and eats his food, 

 with his lower parts in the water. When the rats were disturbed in 

 their house, I found they generally fled to these feeding-huts, where 

 they were almost a certain niark for th(; spearman. 



" In my next excursion, not man)' days after, to the same place, I 

 had still better success. As the ice had now become too thick to be 

 easily penetrated b}- my spear, I adopted, in part, a different mode 

 of taking the game. This time I carried with me. in addition to my 

 spear, two dozen steel-traps, and a bundle of willow sticks (cut on 

 the way) about three feet long. On arriving at the hunting grounds 

 I prepared myself for the day's sport by putting on my mufflers, and 

 with traps and willow sticks slung upon ni)- back, began the work by 

 driving my spear into the first house I came to. I could not now 

 see the rats as they fled from the house, on account of the thickness 

 of the ice and a slight snow that lay upon it. Consequently the sport 

 of spearing them through the ice was cut off. But as often as I had 

 occasion to cut through the walls of the house to take out m)- game, 

 I set a steel-trap in the nest, slipped a willow stick through the ring 

 of the chain, laid it across the hole, slightly stopped it up, and then 

 passed on to the next house ; and so on. until my traps were all gone. 

 I then started back to the place of beginning, driving my spear into 

 every feeding-hut in my course, and killing many rats. Finally, I 

 began going over the ground again, first driving my spear into a 

 house, then examining the trap, taking out the game and re-setting 

 the trap. In this course I was quite successful. I found by setting 

 the trap in the right place, near the edge, and a little under the water, 

 I was almost certain to take the first rat that returned. In making- 

 two or three rounds in this wa)-, I found the rats became somewhat 



