Vegetable Feeders? 59 



when it increases, to do a good deal of harm to the 

 banks by burrowing, though generally they choose an 

 old tree stump, and by preference burrow round about 

 it. Their powers in this way are very remarkable. 

 Man, when he makes a tunnel, needs no end of levels 

 and instruments and calculations, the vole, in the dark, 

 like the mole, can strike his line and burrow along it, 

 and come out at the precise point he wanted. We call 

 this instinct, but when you think of it, it is a wonderful 

 thing. The vole, from his teeth and structure of head 

 is more a beaver than anything else, and indeed he 

 was once so classed scientifically with the beavers, but 

 now forms a leading item in another class of rodents. 

 Unlike the rat he has very short rounded ears, and a 

 short tail by comparison, and his teeth differ in certain 

 important respects. His teeth are yellow teeth like 

 the beaver, owing to the enamel facing they have, and 

 they are precisely of the chisel character. Were it 

 not so they would not be efficient for the work it has 

 to do. 



There has been a good deal of discussion about the 

 habits of these pretty little animals as regards food, 

 some saying that they are purely vegetable feeders, 

 and others that they are occasionally carnivorous or 

 fish-eating, and that they will eat the young of the 

 water-hens, &c. &c. We have good reason to believe 

 that they are strict vegetarians, having frequently set 

 morsels of meat of various kinds in their way, which 

 never tempted them that we could see, and were often 

 passed by them with indifference ; but these same 

 morsels, were sometimes carried off by brown rats that 

 had their holes in the dry ditches near by, an animal 

 for whose depredations our water-vole is doubtless 

 often blamed. 



