* * but the ravages of both have been exaggerated.
Even the musk-rat is not quite such a bogey as the critics suggest. After all the wall that holds up the water of Lake Vyrnwy is largely composed, both at the top and the bottom, of very thick solid concrete, a material hardly liable to the ravages even by the toughest tooth. Indeed there is no sort of danger to this monument, but it remains that we do not want such an immigrant acid that, if it multiplied greatly, danger might ensue. What is wanted is the pooling of biologi- cal knowledge. All the ways of the grey squirrel (des- cribed by Button as a destroyer of corncrops), of the little owl, of the musk-rat were well known in their native haunts, though their introducers, in spite of particular study, seemed almost as ignorant as the general public. A newer threat is the nutria, another fur-bearing animal, of the otter family, which is doing much damage in France, and has been intro- duced into England.
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