18 ' Entomology and Zoology Department. [Bull. 168 



Ants 19 stomachs 



Wasps 7 " 



Flies 2 



Plant fibers and rootlets 43 " 



Seed pods or husks : 8 " 



Crickets 10 



Insect fragments 31 " 



Puparia 21 " 



Cocoons 10 " 



Spiders 23 " 



Grasshoppers 2 " 



Bugs 3 



Skin of grain or roots 6 " 



Hair-worm 1 " 



Number of stomachs infested by parasitic threadworms 28 



In the course of the two years' investigations concerning the 

 ways of the mole about 200 specimens have been checked up on 

 our field notes. From this number the hundred individuals 

 given above were selected so as to include some from each 

 month of the year and to exclude any whose stomachs were 

 empty or nearly so. The selections had no reference to stom- 

 ach content, however, for they were made before examination 

 of the latter. 



The proportions of the various articles of food do not vary 

 with the season as they do in the case of birds, for in some form 

 the insects, worms and grubs listed in the above table are about 

 as abundant in the soil at one time of the year as at another. 

 It is scarcely necessary to add, however, that these supplies 

 are not always equally accessible. In the summer when the 

 soil is wet with recent rains the mole plows along very near 

 the surface, extending his runways rapidly and gathering in a 

 harvest of insects and worms, some of which have also come 

 nearer the surface under these conditions. In dry periods or 

 during portions of the winter season the mole must range 

 deeper, for his prey has likewise found retreat farther down 

 in the soil. 



No attempt has been made to compute the actual percent- 

 ages of each article of food in the list of twenty or more kinds 

 given in the table. Such figures would be mere approximations 

 at best. The end in view in the examination of each stomach 

 was to discover what kind of creatures or substances it con- 

 tained and, by noting repetition of similar parts of these or- 

 ganisms, how many of each kind. 



