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those connecting them with the edge of the field were nearly all the 

 burrows in that immediate locality. Wherever a burrow passed 

 through a hill, the corn was missing. The three or four hills still 

 growing in the one hundred and twenty-foot distance mentioned 

 above, had been missed by the burrows, which passed around and not 

 through them. This corn had been planted about a week. In an ad- 

 joining field planted twelve days before, there were also extensive 

 mole-runs, all made after a recent rain. Here the burrows ran irregu- 

 larly in all directions, no preference being shown for the direction of 

 the rows. No damage had been done by these freshly made burrows 

 in the first-planted field, though the mole had sometimes lifted voung 

 plants by burrowing under the hills. It is possible that if the weather 

 had been hot and diy the com in these hills might have withered. 

 Farmers, indeed, maintain that this is sometimes the case. This ob- 

 servation of the work of moles in corn fields was continued through- 

 out the season in various parts of the state until December. In mid- 

 summer the moles burrowed to a depth of about six inches, but did 

 not tend to follow the rows, nor was any injury done to the corn 

 except possibly a trifling one due to undennining the plants. Peas 

 and beans planted by drills in gardens were sometimes injured in the 

 same way as corn in the field, but here too the injury was done dur- 

 ing the first week after planting, and the later burrows did not tend 

 to follow the direction of the drills. 



On visiting a badly infested corn field it is easy to understand how 

 an uncritical observer might attribute to the mole a deliberate malice 

 and a cunning' almost human in finding and destroying the newly 

 planted com, but probably a simpler explanation of the facts may be 

 given. In soft ground the runs of the mole are often carried for long 

 distances in a straight line. I have seen such runs several hundred 

 feet long in the sandy fields of Mason county. Probably the course of 

 the drill of the planter is followed because it offers the line of least 

 resistance immediately after planting. Later, when the ground be- 

 comes settled, so that all parts of the soil are equally finn, there is no 

 apparent choice in the direction of the runs. 



It has been suggested in defense of the mole that grubs or other 

 insects may destroy the gemiinating com, and that the mole visits the 

 hills to capture the insects. If this be so, the mole is certainly a 

 marvelously effective ag"ent for the destruction of insects, for often 

 not a hill of corn will be missing out of many acres except where 



