20 



than 150 specimens of this ant. The carpenter-ant, Cainponotus penn- 

 sylvanicns, which usuahy nests in logs and stumps in shady woods, was 

 found in the stomachs of all moles taken in woodlands and in one 

 from a g-arden. Two more species of ants were recognized: Solen- 

 opsis dehilis, present in two moles taken in plowed ground ; and a 

 Myrmica, probably scahrinodis, which was found in a single mole 

 captured in a corn field. The click-beetles shown in the table formed 

 but a small part of the total food, and but one buprestid was found. 

 The abdomen of a wasp very much like that of Tiphia was found in 

 a mole from a corn field, and a hymenopterous puparia had been eaten 

 by one from an alfalfa field. Two noctuid pupae occurred in the 

 stomach of a mole from a corn field. It is unfortunate that an im- 

 portant part of the insect food must remain unclassified. 



Corn was present in the stomachs of eleven moles, making 8 of 

 the 1 1 per cent, of vegetable matter eaten by them. Five of these 

 specimens were trapped in corn fields in spring, shortly after corn 

 had been planted, and three of the five had l)urro\ved along the planter 

 track. Two were taken from fields in which the corn was cut and 

 shocked, two were from lawns, and one was from a garden, corn 

 being near at hand in each case. Indeed, corn had been carried into 

 the run of one of the moles trapped in the lawn. Corn in some cases 

 formed the principal part of the stomach content, in one instance 90 

 per cent. Six moles which probably had access to corn, had eaten 

 none. 



Some obse nations made in the spring of 1908 on the work of 

 moles in corn fields illustrate the nature of the damage they may do. 

 In one instance the writer saw a mole-run which followed the track 

 made by a planter wheel for a distance of seventeen hills. Occasion- 

 ally the mole had turned slightly out of its course; but it had im- 

 mediately worked back into the packed soil. The corn had sprouted 

 and w'as showing above ground. Fourteen hills in this strip were 

 dead or dying, the kernel having been eaten away and the sprout left 

 untouched. A similar instance is reported of eighteen hills, not all 

 in the same row, destroyed, apparently by a single mole, after the 

 corn had sprouted. In another case one or more moles, entering a 

 corn field from a pasture adjoining, formed a netw'ork of burrows 

 in an area ten hills wide by nineteen long. Eighty-nine corn hills 

 were missing- in this plot. Grass, grass-roots, seeds, etc., w^ere fre- 

 quently found in the mole stomachs, usually in small quantities, but 



