

By the Rev. A. C. Smith. — 319 
means of an intricate system of drainage, I can well understand that 
the presence of a single mole would be most undesirable, and I can 
appreciate the motive which prompts to an immediate hunt, only 
ending in his capture, whenever a wretched individual of this genus 
chances to wander into those tabooed regions: but in all other places 
where the drains are neither so numerous, nor so complicated, I 
uahesitatingly assert that the benefits which this little animal confers 
on man infinitely counterbalance the trifling injury of which he 
may occasionally be guilty, and that even in the lightest soil; 
whereas in stiff soils, such as are to be found generally throughout 
our districts in North Wilts, the more they loosen the earth and 
drain it with their subterranean galleries, the lighter and the more 
productive it will become: while even the unsightly hillocks may be 
very quickly and easily spread abroad on the land, and no top-dressing 
can be found at once so valuable and so cheaply procured, as the fine 
earth of which these hillocks are composed. 
In short, I trust that the day is not far distant when the mole- 
catcher or want-cateher—as we call him in Wiltshire—with his 
home-made wooden traps, his deliberate movements, his stealthy 
_ tread, and his oracular speech, will be a thing of the past; when 
_ the most conspicuous bush at the crossing of two rides in our woods, 
or near the field gate, shall not be adorned with bunches of this 
- slaughtered innocent; but when all will alike combine to preserve 
_ this, which is at once the most harmless, the most useful, and I may 
truly add, the most persecuted of all our British quadrupeds. 
» , 
VOL. XV.—wNO. XLY. 2D 
