i8o ANIMAL ARTISANS 



tion price for mole-skins has for years been twopence 

 each. It is the dressing and sewing which cost 

 money, and as English furriers have taken a hint 

 from the Chinese work sent over by Li Hung Chang, 

 and cut the skins to a diamond shape, the make-up 

 is of skins covering about seven square inches. 



The injury caused by moles to farmers does not 

 amount to much, except on meadow-land if they are 

 too numerous. Grass grows in hard-pressed soil, weeds 

 in loose soil. As many moles will soon loosen all 

 the surface-soil on an acre, weeds grow there and 

 grass decreases. The good which moles do by drain- 

 ing land is due not to their surface operations, but 

 to their deep burrows. These tunnels are the most 

 permanent of animal highways in this country. They 

 have a complete system of what may be called " trunk 

 lines," which probably are connected up over a whole 

 parish where there is enough meadow-land to make 

 it worth while for the moles to work it. They keep 

 mainly to old pastures, because it is there that the 

 worms are most numerous, worming in ground con- 

 stantly disturbed by ploughing or digging being a 

 slow business, quickly abandoned by all but young 

 and inexperienced moles. But where there is a line 

 of sound meadows the moles stick to it as persistently 

 as the Johannesburgers do to the line of the main 

 reef, and work it both near the surface and in the 

 deep levels with incessant industry. From the main 

 drives they make temporary worm-hunting burrows, 

 which merely represent their excursions in search of 

 food. These are marked by the mole-hills. The 



