Severn Muskrats
The other day it was my fortune to sail down the Severn in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury. Sabrina was very fur; and is not to be less fair for the appearance of a foreign enemy. We passed close to the spot where that fur-bearing animal, the musquash, was bred in attempted captivity. Its capacity for escape was not realized, though it should have been. A pair soon burrowed their way to freedom and lived a free life in the hospitable banks of the Severn. Almost at the same date cuttings happened to have reached me from an Austrian paper, describing the utter honeycombing of canal banks. Our campaign against the escaped rats was expensive and con- tinual watchfulness is necessary ; but it is not easy to find any sign of the beast's presence, even at the hub of its infestation, and very few persons have ever seen the animal itself. Never- theless, it remains as the classic example of the unwisdom of allowing any particular person to attempt experiments in naturalization, except under the strictest control. An im- parted plant (such as the American water weed) or insect (such as the Colorado beetle) or bird (such as the little Spanish owl) or mammal (such as the musquash or American grey Squirrel) may do infinite mischief.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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