go REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 
Genus Sca.oprs Illiger. 
Naked-Tailed Moles. 
Scalops aquaticus (Linnzeus). 
Common Naked-Tailed Mole. 
PLATE 40, Fic. 1. 
Length 6.40 inches. Hands large and naked with powerful 
claws, hind feet small and of normal shape, snout long and 
pointed, tail short and naked. Color glossy silvery gray, often 
tinged with rusty. 
This curious animal spends its entire life in the ground burrow- 
ing here and there at varying depths in pursuit of the earthworms 
which constitute its chief article of food. The operations of the 
mole are much more frequently seen than the animal himself, 
not only the ridges of raised sod, which mark his tunnelings just 
beneath the surface, but the piles of loose earth which he forces 
out from diggings farther under ground. 
The nest or true home of the mole, according to Godman, is 
a cavity six by three inches, some eight inches from the surface, 
in hard soil with numerous communicating passages. 
Moles travel with wonderful rapidity along their passageways, 
and it is no easy matter to capture one whose presence may be de- 
tected from the moving soil at the surface. He usually backs 
away and is gone before we have the burrow opened. The 
tunnels are promptly repaired as often as they are broken in, and 
traps or pitfalls constructed in them are carefully covered with 
earth or a new tunnel dug around them. Mr. Harry Wilson* and 
Mr. S. N. Rhoads** have discussed the economic value of moles. 
The outcome of their investigations seem to be (1) that the 
mole’s food is wholly animal matter, mainly earth worms, the re- 
mainder being largely composed of injurious insects, (2) that 
the mole constructs numerous runways very often undermining - 
* Bull. 31 Penna Dept. Agriculture, 1898. 
*k Forest and Stream, March 5, 1808. 
