The value of the fur of the muskrat causes many of them to be destroyed, which is easily enough effected by means of a trap. This is a simple box, formed of rough boards nailed together, about three feet long, having an iron door, made of pointed bars, opening _inwards_, at both ends of the box. This trap is placed with the end opposite to the entrance of a burrow observed during the day-time. In the night, when the muskrat sallies forth, he enters the box, instead of passing into the open air, and is drowned, as the box is quite filled with water. If the traps be visited and emptied during the night, two may be caught in each trap, as muskrats from other burrows may come to visit those where the traps are placed, and thus one be taken going in as well as one coming out. These animals are frequently very fat, and their flesh has a very wholesome appearance, and would probably prove good food. The musky odour, however, prejudices strongly against its use; and it is probable that the flesh is rank, as the muscles it feeds on are nauseous and bitter, and the roots which supply the rest of its food are generally unpleasant and acrid. Still, we should not hesitate to partake of its flesh, in case of necessity, especially if of a young animal, from which the musk-bag had been removed immediately after it was killed. In this vicinity the muskrat does not build himself a house for the winter, as our fields and dykes are too often visited. But in other parts of the country, where extensive marshes exist, and muskrats are abundant, they build very snug and substantial houses, quite as serviceable and ingenious as those of the beaver. They do not dam the water as the beaver, nor cut branches of trees to serve for the walls of their dwellings. They make it of mud and rushes, raising a cone two or three feet high, having the entrance on the south side, under water. About the year 1804, I saw several of them in Worrell's marsh, near Chestertown, Maryland, which were pointed out to me by an old black man who made his living principally by trapping these animals for the sake of their skins. A few years since I visited the marshes near the mouth of Magerthy river, in Maryland, where I was informed, by a resident, that the muskrats still built regularly every winter. Perhaps these quadrupeds are as numerous in the vicinity of Philadelphia as elsewhere, as I have never examined a stream of fresh water, dyked meadow, or mill-dam, hereabout, without seeing traces of vast numbers. Along all the water-courses and meadows in Jersey, opposite Philadelphia, and in the meadows of the Neck, below the Navy-Yard, there must be large numbers of muskrats. Considering the value of the fur, and the ease and trifling expense at which they might be caught, we have often felt surprised that more of them are not taken, especially as we have so many poor men complaining of wanting something to do. By thinning the number