' LITTLE GENTLEMAN IN BLACK VELVET COAT ' 



by looking for them carefully. When you do 

 this tiny black specks will be found, remains 

 of the organs with which its ancestors saw 

 the beauties of the world ere moles took to 

 living in tunnels under the ground. Perhaps 

 it was their keenness for worms that first made 

 them drive holes into the soil, for they eat an 

 enormous quantity. The appetite of a mole 

 is extraordinary, and it has a very rapid 

 digestion, so it cannot go long without food, 

 even a fast of only a few hours often being 

 fatal. I have known two cases of moles being 

 starved to death. In the first a workman, 

 who knew I wanted a mole alive and unhurt, 

 found one when turning over some rubbish, 

 caught it before it could dig into the ground, 

 and, as it was too late in the day to bring it to 

 me, put it in a box, in which he also put some 

 soil. Next morning, at six o'clock, the mole 

 was not only lying dead on the top of the 

 earth, but was stiff and cold as well ! The 

 second case was that of a mole that I had 

 caught, and which I fed with forty worms late 

 in the afternoon, yet early the next morning it 

 was dead. On examination its stomach proved 

 quite empty, though there was nothing else 

 the matter with it. The little glutton had 

 K 145 



