MOLES AND MOLE-SKINS 181 



high-roads, being ancient excavations, are not marked 

 by mounds, unless some obstruction has been caused. 



If the lines of these highways are examined and 

 traced, it will be found that they are carried round or 

 under very considerable obstacles. In one case lately 

 noticed the tunnel entered a garden from the hedge, and 

 passed under a very ancient grass path, which is known 

 to have been made and in existence for a hundred 

 and fifty years. The site of the mole-run is marked 

 by a depression some two or more inches deep, 

 running across the path, the turf having gradually 

 sunk there owing to successive clearances of earth by 

 the moles from this their main tunnel to the magnifi- 

 cent worming grounds in the paddock and orchard 

 beyond. This trunk-line skirts a paddock, mainly 

 in the fence, and is then carried round an orchard. 

 It plunges under a carriage drive, where there are 

 at least two and a half feet of solid macadam and 

 broken bricks, with hard-rolled gravel on the top, 

 and emerges on the other side, where it runs round 

 the edge of a lawn. This lawn ends in a semi- 

 circular sunk fence of brick, and the moles have run 

 their tunnel round, just under the edge of the bricks. 

 They seem quite aware that they must not meddle 

 with the lawn, and never throw up a hill there, but 

 go on to another meadow beyond. 



It is in these main burrows that the mole-catcher 

 sets his traps. Though the animals have such ill- 

 developed eyes that when a mole is skinned the eye 

 will often " come off" with the skin, so small is the 

 organ and so weakly set in the head, they are very 



