00 BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. 



It was thought by James Hogg, well known as the 

 Ettrick Shepherd, that farmers ought not to destroy 

 moles ; for he considered them of great use in spread- 

 ing manure. He says, " If a hundred men and horses 

 were employed on a pasture farm, say of from 1500 to 

 2000 acres, in raising and driving manure for a top 

 dressing of that farm, they would not do it so neatly, 

 equally, or effectually, as the natural number of moles 

 on the farm would do it for themselves." 



The Linnaean Transactions contain the following cu- 

 rious instance of the swimming of these animals : " On 

 visiting the Loch of Clunie, which I often did," says 

 Mr. Arthur Bruce, " I observed in it a small island, at 

 the distance of one hundred and eighty yards from the 

 nearest land, measured to be so upon the ice. Upon the 

 island, the Earl of Airly, the proprietor, has a castle and 

 a small shrubbery. I remarked frequently the appear- 

 ance of fresh mole roosts or hills. I for some time took 

 them for those of the water mouse, and one day asked 

 the gardener if it was so. l No/ he said, ' it was the 

 mole, and that he had caught one or two lately.' Five 

 or six years before, he caught two in traps, and for 

 two years after this he had observed none. But 

 coming ashore one summer's evening in the dusk, 

 he and the Earl of Airly's butler saw at a short 



