312 COMMON BEASTS OF AN INDIAN GARDEN 



and does so very little harm as readily to escape 

 notice. Very different is it in the case of the 

 common mole-rats, Nesocia bengalensis, who render 

 their presence only too apparent by the unsightly 

 heaps of loose earth, like mole-hills, that they are 

 constantly casting up on the surfaces of lawns, or on 

 sloping banks of ponds where they are particularly 

 noxious, from their love of these sites for their 

 tunnels. In the case of excavated ponds these do 

 comparatively little harm beyond disfiguring the 

 surface of the slopes, but in that of embanked ones 

 they are a source of serious danger by weakening the 

 stability of the banks and facilitating the occurrence 

 of percolation through them. Fortunately, mole-rats 

 are very easily captured, as they can be readily dug 

 out of their burrows, which follow a very superficial 

 course ; and their numbers are also frequently very 

 greatly reduced, probably by the intervention of 

 epidemic disease. During periods in which they 

 abound stringently repressive measures are often 

 called for in order to abate their mischief. About 

 the year 1880 they were so numerous in the Botanic 

 Garden at Shibpur that it was necessary to keep two 

 coolies told off to dig them out of their caves in the 

 slopes of the ponds. This was a most congenial task 

 to the diggers, as they belonged to a class of natives 

 who regard rats as desirable food. Their labours 

 were rendered additionally pleasant by the sense that 

 they were not only a means of procuring stores of 



