April, 1922 habits of the common mole 167 



undoubtedly swim, and one author has given the mole great 

 powers of swimming, due to powerful strokes of the great front 

 feet. Scalopus aquaticiis machrinus (Rafinesque.) does swim 

 well, but the front feet play no part in propelling the animal, 

 they are used only in turning or in righting when not on an 

 even keel. The front feet are held together under the chin 

 where they cut the water like the prow of a tiny motor boat, 

 the propeller in this strange craft being the webbed hind feet 

 which alternate with each other in their movements. The 

 flexible nose is held curved upwards, raising the nostrils well 

 above the water. I have used a stop-watch upon swimming 

 moles and find that the swimming rate averages about a foot 

 per second. I have found the maximum speed in running to 

 be only a little more than double the swimming rate, averaging 

 26.7 inches per second in the specimens tested. Both of these 

 speeds are low, the small hind feet being poorly adapted for 

 swimming and the large front legs so wonderfully adapted to 

 a strong side thrust in digging are poorly adapted to running. 



Moles usually bear a few external parasites, such as fleas 

 and mites, and numerous internal parasites. Nematode worms 

 are not uncommon in the stomach. The most common internal 

 parasite is Monilijormis moniliformis (Travassos). The intes- 

 tines are sometimes so clogged with these parasites that one 

 wonders how food is able to pass along the tract. Moles 

 containing as many as three dozen of these worms give no 

 evidence of the fact in any way unless it be in their ravenous 

 appetites. They must have no difficulty in supplying both 

 themselves and their parasites with food, for even the most 

 heavily infested moles that I observed were in good condition 

 and seemed to have as much fatty tissue as moles not infested. 

 Of twenty moles taken in August, 1917, the average for stomach 

 worms was 1.2 and for intestinal worms 16.4 per animal. 

 The intestinal worms of one animal numbered 23, their average 

 thickness 1.4 mm. and their total length 333.5 cm. The length 

 of the intestine of the mole was 115 cm., making the length 

 of the enclosed parasites nearly three times the length of the 

 intestine that held them. 



The genus Moniliformis is placed in the subfamily Gigan- 

 torhynchincE (Travassos, 1915) this being a subfamily of the 

 GigantorhynchidcE (Hamann, 1892). The members of this 

 genus are parasites in the intestines of rodents. As far as I 



