146 MAMMALIA. 



Order INSECTIVORA. Family 



CONDYLURA CRISTATA 

 Star-nosed Mole. 



The Star-nosed Mole is a common animal along the outskirts of 

 the Adirondacks, where it seems to manifest a predilection for 

 moist situations, being usually found in low ground and in the 

 neighborhood of streams. Its food consists almost wholly of the 

 earthworm, and of various insects which it discovers in its mean- 

 derings through the soil. In general, its habits are much like those 

 of the Shrew Mole, though it does not, apparently, make as extensive 

 excavations, and the "mole hills" along the lines of its galleries 

 are larger. 



In gardens and ploughed ground they often work so near the 

 surface that a ridge of loose earth is upheaved along the course of 

 their tunnels. In meadows and pasture lands, on the contrary, 

 the galleries are not marked by surface ridges, for the simple reason 

 that they cannot readily force their way through the tough sod, but 

 excavate their burrows immediately beneath. Late in the autumn, 

 when the ground becomes frozen to the depth of two or three 

 inches, the Moles sink their galleries into the soft earth below, 

 and as winter advances they doubtless continue to deepen them 

 sufficiently to avoid the frozen ground. Thus both Moles and 

 earthworms escape the severe temperature of our northern winter 

 by withdrawing below the depth to which the frost penetrates. It 

 sometimes happens here that a period of severe cold sets in before 

 much snow has fallen, in which case the ground becomes frozen to 

 the depth of two feet or more. But this state of things is not apt 

 to continue, for advancing winter is almost certain to bring with it 

 a large amount of snow, which, as is well known, keeps out the cold 

 and dissipates the frost already in the earth. I have known the 

 ground to be frozen for two feet below the surface when a fall of 

 about four feet of snow took place. Within two weeks afterward 



