Manchester Memoirs, Vol. liv. (1909), No. H. 7 



and length of that of an adult, and with a development 

 of serviceable teeth, evidently capable of living an in- 

 dependent life. Leaving the nest is doubtless a gradual 

 process, which, I think, takes place at the end of the fourth 

 week, and ends about the end of the fifth week. The 

 specimen in question was five weeks old. 



Desertion or Removal. I have shown in the summary 

 on the preceding page that on revisiting certain nests I 

 found them empty and deserted, and I was puzzled as to 

 what had become of the young, of which there were no 

 traces. I think that if the mother had eaten them, as is 

 the case when the young of many animals are disturbed, 

 some traces would have been left, especially as in two 

 instances the young were more than half grown and nearly 

 fully furred. If the mothers had simply deserted them 1 

 think the young would have been found dead in the nests, 

 as I have found nests containing dead young ones, whose 

 mothers had, for some cause, failed to return. There 

 remains the possibility of their removal by the mother, 

 when she fourd that the nest had been disturbed, though a 

 diligent search on my part failed to reveal their retreats. 

 It is possible, however, that the mother had placed them 

 in one of the many neighbouring tunnels leading from the 

 nests. 



Folklore. There is a legend current among the 

 country people of Surrey to the effect that the mole has 

 only one ear. An old mole-catcher, to whom I mentioned 

 the legend, said he had often heard the story, but he had 

 proved it wrong. He said it arose from the fact that 

 when a mole is killed by knocking it on the head only 

 one ear will bleed, but once a mole that he had so killed 

 bled from both ears, and so he proved the story wrong. 



