168 F. A. HANAWALT Vol. XXII, No. 6 



know the mole has never been included in the list of hosts of 

 this genus of Echinorynchs. If this be true it is not surprising, 

 for I find that moles of one collecting ground may be heavily 

 infested with the parasites, while moles a few miles away may 

 be entirely free from them. 



On account of their tunneling in lawns, flower gardens, 

 truck patches, golf hnks and such places, the mole is commonly 

 regarded as a pest. From the standpoint of his food, he is to 

 be considered beneficial, but when a mole uproots hill after hill 

 of melons to get the larvae of the striped cucumber beetle 

 projecting from the roots of the vines, the cure is decidedly 

 worse than the disease. Once the mole finds a good feeding 

 ground he can not be easily driven away, and if he is doing any 

 real damage it will be found advisable to destroy the animal 

 in some way rather than to attempt to make him seek other 

 feeding grounds. 



Experiments made by placing salt, sulphur, pepper and other 

 irritating substances in mole runs in an attempt to drive them 

 out of lawns and golf links have proven failures, the animal 

 simply building another set of tunnels in another part of the 

 lawn or golf course. One often hears that castor bean plants 

 about a garden will keep moles away, but the writer has seen 

 moles burrow directly under castor bean plants. Dogs can 

 be trained to catch moles, but they will not eat them, 

 presumably on account of their bad odor. Cats also catch 

 moles, usually at night, they also refusing to eat the captured 

 animal. Poisoning is one of the artificial means that may be 

 used in reducing the number of moles, the most convenient 

 method consisting of soaking corn, then placing strychnine or 

 arsenic in the heart of the grain by pricking it in with a tooth- 

 pick or other blunt instrument. The poisoned bait should be 

 placed in the mole runways, one grain of this being sufficient 

 to kill a mole. Care should be taken to select no poison with 

 a decided odor, as this will lessen the efficiency of the method. 

 I have found arsenic the most satisfactory poison to use. 



The most common means of destruction, also the most 

 efficient, is the use of traps. Traps of the nature of pitfalls 

 have proven useless in the hands of the author, yet if they are 

 carefully set they occasionally make a catch. Moles are often 

 found drowned in wells walled up with boulders, but in this 

 case it is probably thirst that causes the mole to lose his life in 



