THE MOLE 119 



against a wall, so that its work is not compatible with high culture 

 in either the field or garden. In fields under ordinary crops and 

 in pleasure grounds, its good influence is unquestionable ; also 

 in woodlands, coppices, hedgerows, and rough places generally, 

 often the breeding grounds of noxious pests and from whence in- 

 fections of useful crops often proceed and extend over wide areas. 



Against the virtues, including that of being very good to eat, of the 

 hedgehog must be placed the very grave faults of egg-stealing and 

 killing the young of ground-breeding wild birds, this applying to 

 both game and poultry. The gamekeeper and the poultry farmer 

 accordingly consider the hedgehog as " vermin " and act so as to 

 prevent its depredations or recurrence of them by trapping. This 

 is generally effected by means of ordinary steel spring traps, an 

 egg or a recently hatched dead game or poultry chick being used 

 as a bait and so placed that the prickly intruder must pass on to the 

 trap, duly concealed and affixed by cord or chain to a peg driven 

 into the ground or to some fixed object (Fig. 76). In the case of 

 a particular individual paying repeated visits to a particular place, a 

 run or track may be discernible, when two or three traps set therein 

 and about the place will secure the intruder. 



MOLE. The natural enemies of the mole are now so few in num- 

 ber that once a colony of moles becomes established in any locality 

 the occupier of the land has to consider whether the work of the 

 subterranean creature is useful or injurious to the crops. The 

 sportsman has good reason to complain of mole-hills on glades and 

 drives in woods, also alongside of coverts, as a cause of stumbling, 

 the soft and hollow ground impeding the hunter's "mount" 

 speedy and safe gallop. To game, the mole is innocuous ; but, by 

 devouring ground pests it may deprive winged game of some insect 

 food, 1 'while in itself affording some of the fox's dietary. The fores- 

 ter suffers in the nursery from the disrooting, upheaval, and covering 

 up of seedling plants, but in woods and plantations the mole does 

 practically no harm other than blocking ditches more or less, thus 

 necessitating scouring periodically in return for the great benefit 

 conferred by the destruction of ground root-destroying pests. On 

 commons and moors, even grazed hill pastures, the mole may be 

 regarded as a blessing rather than as a curse. The farmer is affected 

 by the mole in two ways : first by the food it eats, and secondly, by 

 the work it carries on to obtain that food. The food largely con- 

 sists of the earthworm, which, like the mole, tunnels in the ground 

 and casts up earth that has passed through its body and surface- 

 dresses the vegetation with vegetable mould, while by its borings 

 through the soil air and water is let into the ground and a sort of 

 tillage effected. The mole also feeds largely on insect larvae, par- 

 ticularly grubs, notably wireworm. On the other hand, by driving 

 its tunnels in all directions it lets the air into the soil, and throws up 

 loose soil on the surface in the form of mole-hills, thus acting much 



