292 NETHER LOCHABER. 



consideration of the case Macarthur's theory is briefly to this effect : 

 Moles are mainly underground dwellers, and even their travelling 

 and migrating from place to place are done subterraneously. If, 

 however, they find themselves, as in the Highlands they must 

 frequently do, in a district or part of district separated from other 

 parts in which they have never "been by rocky spurs and ridges, 

 they will not venture over these latter unless they carry suffi- 

 cient earth to hide their tunnelling, which, it is needless to say, 

 they frequently do not. The mole in such a case remains insulated, 

 a prisoner, so to speak, within his present domain. Last winter 

 and spring, however, according to Sandy's theory, the snow lay so 

 deep and lay so long, that the moles took advantage of the fact, 

 and making their tunnels under the snow, where it lay on spur and 

 ridge, just as if it had been so much superincumbent soil, they 

 easily got into fresh fields and pastures new. In this way alone 

 can Sandy account for the appearance of moles this summer 

 in places into which hitherto they had no means of ready access ; 

 and he may be right, though it is a point in the natural history of 

 the Talpa well deserving further investigation. Sandy further 

 avers that moles sometimes swim across rivers, fresh-water lakes, 

 and even arms of the sea in their migrations ; and this is just 

 possible, though we took the liberty of expressing ourselves slightly 

 incredulous. Sandy, however, ought to know; he has spent 

 the best part of a life already approaching its grand climacteric in 

 the careful and close and constant study of, as one may say, a single 

 animal to wit, the mole and it is always hazardous gravely to 

 doubt or contradict the deliberately expressed opinion of such a 

 man on a matter strictly within his proper province. All the same 

 we still venture to question the assertion that the mole ever 

 voluntarily enters water deep enough to swim in, or ever dims the 

 velvety sheen of its glossy pile even by such a luxury as a voluntary 

 bath in the shallows, till we have some stronger proof for it than 

 has yet been adduced. 



