there the prospective raiser
should see that it is started at once by sowing wild rice seed,
transplanting some flags and lily roots to his muskrat waters. In fact,
the prospective muskrat raiser should have the food supply well under
way before the rats are brought or secured or they will destroy it.

There are no doubt hundreds of places that can be converted into ideal
"muskrat preserves" by a little work. Low, marshy land on which the
water is not deep enough to be dammed. Such a place would require a wire
fence around it. Perhaps the best way would be to place the fence
several rods back from the water, as there would then be no danger of
the animals burrowing under. The fence should be of five-foot wire, one
foot in the ground. Where the fence crosses any inlets or outlets, the
wire should be put much deeper for two rods or more on each side and it
would be well to place flat stones in the bottom of the trench, as shown
and described in the chapter on Enclosures.

CHAPTER X.

RACCOON RAISING.

The raccoon is closely allied to the bears, although much smaller. Like
them it possesses an omnivorous appetite, is plantigrade, and hibernates
during cold weather. It is found throughout the Southern, Central and
Eastern States, and in Southern Ontario and Nova Scotia. It is also
found in good numbers on the Pacific coast, northward into British
Columbia; but they are found in greatest numbers in the extreme South of
the United States, and especially in Florida, Louisiana and the lowlands
of Arkansas and Texas.

Their natural home is in the heavily timbered parts, but they are also
found in the sparsely wooded bottom lands of the Central States.

They den, as a rule, in hollow trees, well up from the ground, and
seldom if ever in a tree which has a continuous hollow and an opening at
the bottom, preferring a hollow, broken off limb, or a hole in the
trunk, high up on the tree. In some places they den in natural caves in
the rocks, and in the western part of their range, it is said that they
sometimes occupy dens in some high and dry bank of earth. During the
mating season the males travel considerably, and will, when daylight
approaches, seek a place of rest in any hollow tree that is to be found,
or failing to find this, may spend the day in a hollow log or under a
stump.

The mating season comes mainly, late in February or early in March, and
the young, from four to six in number, are born in April and th