34 TALPID^— TALPA 



knots or bunches of pallid, sickly looking, semi-torpid worms. 

 In early spring he has often found a similar knot of worms, 

 three or four in number, embedded in a semi-torpid state in the 

 solid earth of fortresses, where he believes they had congregated 

 of their own free will. He has never met with knots of worms 

 in the tunnels, and concludes that their presence in a fortress 

 is explained by their having fallen in and been unable to get out 

 again. ^ But, although there is thus no trustworthy evidence 

 supporting the theory that moles store up worms, it is in- 

 teresting to find that they possess the instinct to do so. Alston's 

 captive often buried its food, and Mr Adams relates that on 

 one occasion when he had fed one until it could eat no more, 

 it took a worm, bit it with quick bites along its whole 

 length, crammed it into the earth, left it, and turned about to 

 find another."^ On receiving one, a large lobworm, it treated it 

 in precisely the same manner, thrusting it into the same hole 

 and straightway covering it up with earth scraped over it with 

 its fore paws. On two other occasions this mole was observed 

 to bury worms, and once a dead mouse, in the same way. On 

 the whole, it seems unlikely, although the Mole may sometimes 

 disable and bury surplus worms, that its victims should when 

 thus treated remain alive for a sufficient length of time to be of 

 use as a reserve of food. 



There are many errors in the ordinary accounts of the 

 breeding habits of the Mole, the most serious being the belief 

 that males are much more numerous than females. The mistake 

 arose from the fact that, as pointed out by Geoffroy, it requires 

 expert knowledge to distinguish the sexes externally. Mr 

 Adams finds that males and females are about equal in numbers, 

 which fact obviates the necessity for the supposed bloody battles 

 between the superfluous suitors as described in text-books.^ 

 There is only one short rutting season. This is, in Stafford- 

 shire, practically confined to the latter part of March, April, 

 and perhaps occasionally the beginning of May. Mr Adams's 



* This is also the explanation given in an interesting paragraph on this subject in 

 W. A. Dutt's Wild Life in East Anglia, 183, 1906. 



2 Captive shrews act in a similar manner (Cocks, in lit). 



^ A fight between two males took place, according to Mayne Reid {pp. cit. supra, 

 p. 19), above ground on a 21st December. 



