50 The Great World's Farm 



in some parts other quadrupeds are almost excluded. The 

 gophers extend over hundreds of thousands of square 

 miles, and have honey-combed millions of acres. One 

 may indeed ride for days and even weeks through some 

 districts, finding them everywhere as plentiful as if the 

 whole district were one vast warren. 



Other burrowers, better known in the Old World, are 

 the marmots, which make very large and rather compli- 

 cated burrows, and have quite riddled the rocks in Turk- 

 estan, in some parts of which they abound; and others 

 again of the same great family of rodents, or "gnawers," 

 the gerboas, have honey-combed the sides of mountains 

 in South Africa, and possess such strong teeth that in the 

 north they even gnaw through the thin layer of stone 

 beneath the sand, and thus do some of the very first work 

 of the pioneer laborers. 



In England the field burrower with which we are most 

 familiar, unpleasantly familiar, too, is the common mole. 

 No matter where he lives, the mole's labors are not any- 

 where looked at with a friendly eye by farmer or gardener. 



The sins alleged against him are: that he drains the 

 soil so thoroughly by his network of underground galleries 

 as to render it dry and barren ; that he damages the crops 

 by uprooting them, and by exposing, destroying, or eating 

 their roots; and finally, that he uses such a large quantity 

 of spring corn, as much as a couple of hundred blades, to 

 make his bed, that where he abounds one-eighth of the 

 crop is lost. 



These are serious accusations; but the mole is not 

 without friends, enthusiastic friends even, though prob- 

 ably not farmers or gardeners, and these declare that the 

 damage done is slight .compared with the service rendered. 



