i8o 
MAMMALIA. 
shelter in which it is eaten. It is quite a conspicuous object, the 
summit projecting above the water or ice, and is therefore most 
commonly found in places that are a little out of the beaten paths of 
man. During the fall and winter, Muskrats speedily repair injuries 
done to their houses. This habit is put to advantage by the trapper, 
who, chopping a hole in the side of the hut and placing a trap in the 
breach, often secures the entire family in the course of a few days. 
The above remarks apply to the highest type of Muskrat architecture. 
There are many less perfect, and at the same time less conspicuous 
forms of these store-houses, that are to be met with in almost every 
locality where the species exists in any numbers. Along the borders 
of ponds and sluggish streams there often stand old hollow stumps 
whose roots extend out under the water. Such stumps will frequently 
be found, as cold weather approaches, stuffed full of the wads of grass 
that are used in hut building, the angles and crevices between the 
roots being packed with the same material. Advantage is also taken 
of other inconspicuous places in which to deposit food, and some- 
times, where there is no current, boating hoards of grass and roots 
are established — veritable floating islands in miniature — in the 
vicinity of their huts. When the ice is not too thick they generally 
keep open a few breathing holes at certain favorite feeding grounds 
in very shallow water, frequently covering them over with grass. 
My observation that the Muskrat, in the North, habitually lays up 
provisions for winter’s use does not accord with the statements of 
others, the only allusion to such a habit that I have seen being con- 
tained in the following very interesting narrative from Audubon and 
Bachman (who, by the way, evidently considered it as exceptional): — 
“ An acquaintance who had a garden in the neighborhood of a 
meadow which contained a large number of Musk-Rats, sent one day, 
to enquire whether we could aid in discovering the robbers who 
carried off almost every night a quantity of turnips. We were sur- 
prised to find on examining the premises, that the garden had been 
plundered and nearly ruined by these Rats. There were paths ex- 
