A DIGGER OF HIGH EFFICIENCY 153 



of tough muscles and powerful tendons, shaped like an In- 

 dian club, of enormous size in proportion to the creature's 

 body. 



The Mole is a wonderful example of energy and power. 

 Desiring to observe their methods of working when undis- 

 turbed, I once placed one in a five-acre clover field, at 11 

 o'clock a. m. During the first seven hours it had tunnelled 

 twenty-three feet, in a zigzag line. During the next seven- 

 teen hours it dug thirty-five feet, and during the next hour, 

 ten feet more. The total work consisted of sixty-eight feet 

 of main line, and thirty-six and a half feet of branches, mak- 

 ing in all one hundred and four and a half feet. 



An observing farmer boy, named Lawrence Miller, once 

 gave me a clear and intelligent description of a Mole's burrow 

 which he uncovered and observed 

 closely. It was a dome-shaped 

 hole, two feet below the surface 

 of the ground, reached from 

 above by a hole that ran down 

 slanting into its top. The burrow End of nose. Left forefoot. 



STAR-NOSED MOLE. 



was a foot wide at the bottom, 



where three small galleries ran off about six inches, in dif- 

 ferent directions. Near the top of the chamber was a sort 

 of shelf, supporting a bed of soft material, and on this lay a 

 Mole. The young are usually two in number. 



Besides the Common Mole, of the eastern United States 

 generally, we have the Prairie or Silver Mole of the prairie 

 regions of the Mississippi Valley; the Hairy -Tailed Mole of 

 the eastern United States, and the Oregon Mole of the Pacific 



