114 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



positive on one side or the other; he knows all 

 about it, and is angry with his neighbours either 

 because they do or do not kill their moles. There 

 are always a few extremists. Every one has heard 

 of Mr. Joseph Nunn, who maintains that the 

 sparrow is the farmer's best feathered friend, and 

 is carried by his zeal to the length of declaring that 

 all those who shoot the sparrow ought themselves 

 to be shot. I hear of another farmer who buys 

 moles from mole-catchers to put on his land; he 

 is convinced that their presence is wholly bene- 

 ficial, that when those inhabiting the lands adjoin- 

 ing his farm have been killed off, his own moles 

 flow out into these depleted grounds to enjoy the 

 greater abundance of food they find there; and it 

 is to make good this loss inflicted on him by the 

 ignorance and stupidity of his neighbours that he 

 is obliged to act as he does. 



Recently I was with a man who takes the 

 opposite view; one who revolves schemes and 

 projects for the suppression of the mole. This 

 enemy of the mole is in possession of three or four 

 water-meadows, infested by these animals to an 

 extraordinary degree. As he is partly dependent 

 for a livelihood on a few milch-cows he keeps, the 

 condition of this meadow land is a matter of im- 

 portance to him; and he has come to the con- 

 clusion that he loses a large portion (a fourth, he 

 imagines) of his grass crop on account of the 

 uneven condition of the surface caused by the 

 moles. It is true that he could roll the ground, 



