398 General Notes. [June, 
Drownep By AN Octopus.—Though in British Columbia at the 
time of the occurence of the incident referred to by Mr. Moseley 
in Nature (vol. xvii, p. 27), I was in the interior, and consequently 
heard nothing of the matter. On reading Mr. Moseley’s letter, - 
however, I wrote to my friend Dr. W. F. Tolmie, of Victoria, and 
have just received from him an account verifying in all essential 
particulars the extract quoted by Mr. Moseley from the Weekly 
Oregonian. 
A party of Makaw or Makah Indians, of Cape Flattery, were 
returning from a visit to the Songish Indians of the vicinity of 
“Victoria, and camped the first afternoon at Metchosin, on the 
south shore of Vancouver Island. A young woman having 
separated herself from the others to bathe, did not return in the 
evening, and after having searched for her in vain the next morn- 
ing, the rest of the party were about to continue on their journey, 
when, on rounding the first point, they saw the body of the wo- 
man as if seated on the sandy sea-bottom, with a large octopus 
attached to it, which, according to the description of Dr. Tolmie’s 
informant, resembled a “ fifty pound flour sack, full.” The body 
was rescued in the manner described in the Oregonian, and when 
brought ashore, still had portions of the arms of the octopus ad- 
hering to it. 
Dr. Tolmie also mentions the case of an Indian woman at Fort 
Simpson, who had, many years ago, a narrow escape from a similar 
death ; also that among the Chimsgau Indians traditions of escapes 
and occasional cases of drowning exist, and further, that among 
these people a story is current that“ a two-masted vessel manned 
in part or whole by men, with obliquely placed eyes and wearing 
queues (at Milbank Sound, Lat. 52°, about seventy years ago), 
was seized by an enormous squid, whose tentacles had to be 
chopped with axes ere the craft was clear of it. The ship is said 
to have been wrecked further south on the coast, in consequence 
of the evil influence of the monster.”—Grorce M. Dawson, in 
Nature. 
Tue HABITS or THE Muskrat.—About the middle of last No- 
vember while walking along the banks of the North Fork of 
Sappa creek, Rawlins county, Kansas, my attention was directed 
to an old beaver dam that had been recently repaired by a musk- 
rat. Mud had been placed on the dam so as to make it water- 
tight, but so far as I could see no sticks had been brought there, 
excepting those used in the first building by the beaver. Some 
was removed so as to allow more water to escape and 
atrap set. The next morning the trap was sprung and the mud 
-partly replaced. No beaver signs were to be found anywhere, 
while the tracks of muskrats were numerous in the mud used in 
repairing, and elsewhere around the dam. A trapper informed 
me that he had frequently observed dams that had been repaired 
-= by muskrats in a simlar manner.— Russell Hill. 
