136 TALPAD^. 



their own retreats ; but this cannot materially influence 

 their number, for it is only by the quantity of nourish- 

 ment which they are able to procure that the increase of 

 these little Malthusians is limited. 



Be this as it may, however, the opinion is generally so 

 strong against this active and unceasing labourer, that 

 thousands are annually destroyed, and a considerable 

 income is received by a good Mole-catcher in the course 

 of a season, at a trifling sum given for each captured 

 Mole. Mr. Jackson, to whom we have already alluded, 

 and who appears to be a very intelligent person, and 

 particularly successful in his business, states that he had 

 been a Mole -catcher for thirty-five years, during which 

 time he had destroyed from forty to fifty thousand of these 

 animals. Mr. Couch, whose name is so well known as a 

 zealous naturalist, and of whom such frequent mention 

 is made by Mr. Yarrell, in his work on British Fishes, 

 states that a Mole-catcher in Cornwall took no less than 

 twelve hundred Moles in six winter months. But all 

 others must yield to Le Court, who, in the short space 

 of five months, took no less than six thousand Moles, 

 within a comj)aratively small district ; and two of his 

 pupils, during the month that they were under his 

 instructions, killed nine hundred and seventy-one. It 

 really seemed as if it were impossible that a Mole could 

 escape this extraordinary person : wherever he struck 

 his hoe, he found the Mole's run ; wherever he placed his 

 trap, the Mole was surely taken. His trap was of a 

 very simple construction. It consisted of a steel instru- 

 ment of two branches, formed somewhat like a pair of 

 sugar-tongs, excepting that the branches crossed each 

 other about their mid-length ; so that the elasticity of 

 the bend brought the extremities forcibly outwards and 

 towards each other : the branches were held asunder bv 



