HOW TO KNOW THE WILD ANIMALS 



By DOUGLAS ENGLISH, B.A., F R.P.S. 



Author of '"Wee Tim'rous Beasties," etc. 



THE MOLE 



With Photographs by the Author 



THE existing evidence with respect 

 to the hte-history of the Mole is 



not only conflicting but bewilder- 

 ing. Few wild animals have proved so 

 attractive to the curious, few have so 

 baffled curiosity, and in no case has 

 obser\'ation been beset with greater dif- 

 ficulties. We can 

 but conjecture 

 as to the circum- 

 stances of his 

 life-cycle. On 

 rare occasions we 

 may encounter 

 him above 

 ground — he has 

 sometimes been 

 obser\-ed swim- 

 ming — a practice 

 for which his 

 paddle-hands 

 and par t i a 1 1 y 

 webbed hind feet 

 should pecuHarlv 

 fit him. But. if 

 the only evi- 

 dence of a Mole's 

 existence were to 

 be derived from 



such encounters, we should consider him 

 an extremely rare animal, and it would 

 be rash to draw conclusions as to his 

 everyday below-ground habits and ap- 

 pearance from circumstances which, as 

 far as we know, are almost as abnormal 

 as those of the stranded fish. 



The , anatomy of the Mole has been 

 minutely investigated, and it might be 

 supposed that a conception of his li\-ing 

 appearance, based on such investigations, 

 would be approximately correct. It must 

 be remembered, however, that the 

 anatomy of the Mole is pecuUarly aber- 



34 265 



A MOLE'S FORTRESS SITUATKD Al 

 OF A TREE. 



rant. There are no easily observed forms 

 of life to which we might refer for some 

 standard of comparison, and the diffi- 

 culty in reconstructing a Mole's character- 

 istic attitudes from his bones and nmscles 

 is the difficulty experienced in recon- 

 structing the Okapi. My photographs 

 give, I think, a 

 good idea of the 

 set of a living 

 Mole's hmbs, of 

 the texture of 

 his fur, and of 

 h i s appearance 

 out of his ele- 

 ment; but I 

 claim no more 

 for them than 

 that. 



The evidence 

 we chiefly rely 

 on in respect to 

 the life-history of 

 the ]\Iole is de- 

 ri\'ed from his 

 earth-works, and 

 these may con- 

 veniently be di- 

 \-ided into his 

 fortresses, his hillocks, and his runs. 

 All three present interesting and, at 

 present, only partially solved })roblems. 



The fortress appears to have been 

 first in\'estigated by a Frenchman, Le 

 Court. From his notes, which were 

 adopted by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, is 

 derived a text-book illustration pur- 

 porting to represent a fortress interior, 

 and the nest within it, which is probably 

 familiar to many of my readers. The 

 fortress is represented as containing two 

 horizontal circular galleries, one about 

 level with the to]) of the nest, and one 



lHh KOOT 



