CHAPTER IV 

 THE MOLE 



IN February the moles begin to throw up their heaps on the 

 sere marshlands. Those heaps vary in size from nice piles 

 of earth that could be held in a child's toy pail to piles the 

 "size of a tumbril-load." But the average measure of the nest- 

 ing heaps is four feet in diameter. And though they work 

 by night and day, it is a slow process making that intricately 

 galleried nest ; for they pat all the gallery walls with their 

 flapper-like claws, leaving their nail marks upon the mud 

 partitions. From this galleried house there are numerous 

 runs galleries running into the hard marsh-land galleries 

 bored through the marsh, as the smaller piles of " diggings " 

 prove ; but in soft upland earth, or in river-walls, they often 

 merely force their way under the turf. 



Let us, on a fine March morning, go down to the marsh, 

 and dissect one of these domed and galleried nurseries. 

 The roof-crust is hard as we cut into it, and we find after 

 having removed it an upper circular gallery round the 

 dome, with four descending galleries, leading downwards 

 and inwards to the central hard-roofed globe, where the 

 nest, made of fresh or light coloured grass, lies. Below 

 this are galleries, leading downwards and outwards to a 

 circular gallery under the turf a gallery opening into 

 several runs, that lead away into the marsh bottom. Every 

 gallery is plastered and beaten hard by their little hands, 

 the thousands of nail -marks showing the toil and trouble 

 they had to build their home with hands. As this is a 

 hard clay-bottomed marsh, their whole scheme of working is 



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