Sappers and Miners 



unwound (if made of grass) to find the centre. There is 

 never a hole apparent, and not only is the nest always 

 found closed when the young are within, but in all cases, 

 even when old and long deserted. When dry grass is 

 not obtainable fresh green grass is used, which soon 

 withers and gets dry with the heat of the mole's body. 

 When a nest containing young is found it is invariably 

 infested with fleas and mites. 



" Nearly every fortress has a bolt run, by which the mole 

 can escape when surprised in the nest. This run leads 

 downwards from the bottom of the nest, and then turns 

 upward and out of the fortress by a tunnel of its own, 

 and is very rarely connected with any of the other 

 numerous exits of the fortress. The only fortresses that 

 I have seen without the bolt run have been on marshy 

 land, where such a tunnel would have led to water." 



The mole is an energetic sapper, a plucky fighter and 

 a glutton. A popular writer on natural history once 

 pictured a mole magnified to the size of a lion, and he 

 visualised a beast more terrifying, more greedy and more 

 energetic than anything that has been seen upon the 

 earth ; he is, at all events, in his actual living form the 

 burrowing mammal. 



Before we mention the animal which is usually con- 

 sidered to typify cunning, let us spare a little space 

 for the wolverine or glutton, the most cunning of al] 

 quadrupeds. So wily is he that to trap him is wellnigh 

 impossible ; he is even impertinent enough to feed upon 

 the trapped animals of the North American hunters. 

 The wolverine will also enter any temporarily vacated 

 homestead and remove all the portable articles to the 

 neighbouring brushwood. Exactly the object of so curious 

 a proceeding is not clear. 



The fox, as befits so cunning a creature, often avails 

 himself of the rabbit's burrow. True, the rabbit is a 

 smaller animal than the fox, but he makes a wide tunnel 

 for his size and one which the fox can easily enlarge to 



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