90 Wild Life in Wales 



The farm where the mole-killing was in progress to-day 

 is infested with Voles, and of these the Mole is known to 

 be a destroyer, when his ordinary food of worms and grubs 

 runs short. He may (and I think does) take a certain 

 quantity of vegetable food, in the shape of underground 

 shoots of grass (generally, be it noted, couch grass where it 

 occurs), but any damage done in that way is so insignificant 

 that it may be ignored, while his hillocks form a good top- 

 dressing to the grass, and are gradually spread by sheep, 

 who thereby, it has been claimed, help to grind off the 

 superfluous growth of their own hoofs. 



The range of the Mole in Merionethshire extends to the 

 summits of the highest hills. It follows the runs of the 

 Voles, wherever these may lead, and often pushes up to 

 altitudes to which they do not aspire. On the rocky tops 

 of the Arans, its runs were frequent everywhere, under the 

 disappearing snow, when I climbed those hills a few weeks 

 ago ; and the peat in many a rock basin, to which the only 

 access was by an over-land (or rather, over-rock) route, was 

 often riddled by them. In summer the same thing may be 

 noticed, the tunnels appearing in many places to which 

 no underground communication exists. In this way it 

 becomes perfectly evident that the Mole must, occasionally, 

 travel for his pleasure upon the surface of the ground, a 

 fact well enough understood by some old mole-catchers, but 

 not, I think, generally known. To some extent Moles feed 

 on the surface ; but what sense it is that prompts them to 

 undertake the longer journeys, unless it be a pure love of 

 wandering, or whether they simply " follow their noses," as 

 the saying is, and trust to blind chance as to whither they 

 may be led, may for the present be regarded as an open 

 question. Without attempting to solve that point, the 

 following observations, made during two consecutive years, 

 may be of interest : they only confirmed others I had made, 

 years ago, under very nearly similar conditions. 



In a certain field that I had under almost daily observa- 

 tion, there was a slight depression filled with a black peaty 

 soil. The land round about was hard and stony, of poor 

 quality, and little calculated to tempt a Mole to bore it. 



