170 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
Shakspeare also makes use of the word wrchin as an adjective 
when he speaks of a “ grim and wrchin-snouted boar” (Venus and 
Adonis, stanza 185). 
Tue Motz, Talpa Europea. 
We now come to one of the most useful, though one of the most 
persecuted, of British mammals—“ The blind Mole,” which “casts _ 
copp’d hills towards heaven” (Pericles, Act i., Scene 1). 
When will occupiers of land learn to know that the beautiful 
verdure of their parks and pastures is mainly preserved by Moles, 
whose chief food consists of the larve of Coleopterous and Lepi- 
dopterous insects, besides worms and slugs. The hillocks, which 
to many appear so unsightly, should never remain long enough for 
the grass to go through them. No artificial manure, costing, say, 
ten times as much as the labour of spreading the fresh hillocks 
evenly over the grass, will produce anything like so good a crop of 
grass. I have tried it for years, and can speak from experience. 
Besides it should be borne in mind that the most expensive top-. 
dressings will not destroy the insect enemy at work at the roots of 
the grass, even if applied thick enough to kill the grass itself! 
Surely, then, it is far better and far more economical to manure 
the ground with the hillocks themselves. 
Shakspeare was well acquainted with the acute sense of hearing 
in the Mole. He makes Caliban say— 
‘“« Pray you, tread softly that the blind Mole may not 
Hear a footfall: we are now near his cell.” 
Tempest. Act iv., Scene 1. 
In the first part of Henry IV. (Act iii., Scene 1), Hotspur 
complains— 
«He angers me 
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant ; 
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,” &e. 
As an epithet the name “ Mole” was well applied by Hamlet 
to the ghost of his father— 
* Well said, old Mole! can’st work in the earth so fast ? 
A worthy pioneer !”’ 
Hamlet. Act i., Scene 1 
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