RESULTS OF Examination ov Femai.e Moines in the IvAboraTory 



The economic relation of the mole — whether beneficial or in- 

 jurious — has been a disputed topic for many years. It could not be 

 denied that the burrowing habit of the mole is an annoyance and in- 

 deed a positive injury to lawns, cemeteries, etc., but besides this 

 mechanical and incidental injury, gardeners and farmers have main- 

 tained that moles do a more definite and deliberate damage by eating 

 newly planted seeds, by following along the rows of corn, peas, etc., 

 taking all the seeds from hill after hill in succession, and by eating 

 parts of plants, the roots of vegetables, the tubers of potatoes, and 

 the like. On the contrary, naturalists in general, reasoning from the 

 anatomy of the animal, the structure of its teeth, and the proven fact 

 that it feeds largely on insects, worms, and other underground ani- 

 mals, have doubted the possibility of its eating vegetation to any 

 great extent, and have accounted for the injury to seeds and veg- 

 etables commonly charged to moles as really due either to insects 

 which the mole itself was seeking, or to mice which entered the 

 mole's burrow after it. 



In this state the most bitter complaint ag-ainst moles has been 

 that they destroy recently planted corn. In some cases it w'as said 

 that 25 per cent, of the first planting of a field had been destroyed. In 

 the spring of 1907, when the writer was sening as a zoological as- 



