WATER SHREW 31 



one exception they were quite pale on the under parts. One 

 of them now forms part of the collection of native mammals 

 in the Museum of Science and Art ; and the gambols of the 

 survivors have been a source of pleasure to me on several 

 subsequent occasions. 



MOLE. 

 TALPA EUROP^EA L. 



Innumerable colonies of Moles inhabit all our cultivated 

 lands and pastures, from the shores of the Forth to the 

 summits of the hills ; I have myself seen their " hillocks " at 

 fully 1700 feet on the Pentlands, and still higher on the Ochils. 

 In the lowlands, where agriculture is at its height, the farmers 

 wage an incessant war against it through the medium of the 

 professional mole-catcher, but in the upland pastures it is less 

 molested, and consequently its habits and economy can be 

 there more readily studied. In such outlying districts, on 

 the lower slopes of the Pentland and Moorfoot hills, I have 

 frequently dug into the large mounds, or fortresses as they 

 have been called, containing the snug beds of soft grass in 

 which the animals repose during the short intervals from 

 labour in their subterranean hunting-grounds, but cannot say 

 that I have found the number or position of the tunnels with 

 which these mounds are pierced, disposed with the mathe- 

 matical exactitude invariably ascribed to them on the strength 

 of Le Court's observations. Occasionally a close agreement 

 with the well-known illustration is observed, but as a rule 

 the departure from it is very considerable. The following 

 figure accurately represents the plan of a " fortress," about 

 three feet in diameter, which I dissected in April 1891 on 



