ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ONTARIO. 19 



ance of mice, they are in internal structure widely different. The rodent type of teeth as 

 illustrated by the common meadow-mouse, or vole (Arvicolariparius), whose sharp, chisel- 

 shaped incisors and flat-topped molars are admirably adapted to the gnawing and grinding 

 of the farmer's grain and roots, is replaced in the moles and shrews by a totally different 

 dentition. Here we have projecting incisors, mostly one pair, canines, pre-molars with 

 pointed crowns and (usually) trifid molars — a machine well fitted for the capture of 

 terrestrial insects, whose hard elytra are crushed with a facility truly surprising. 



That the distinction between a shrew and a mouse is not more clearly known is a 

 decided misfortune to both the farmer and the shrew. Meadow-mice feed on the farmer's 

 crops and are generally treated as they truly are — that is, unmitigated pests, Shrews 

 feed on insects and (in the case of one species, at least) on those very mice the farmer so 

 cordially dislikes. Yet to the average farmer every little furry creature that runs 

 through his fields is merely a mouse, nay even worse than that, if any distinction is 

 made at all, it is usually against the poor little " screw mouse " — an unreasonable pre- 

 judice allied to superstition. I have seen a farmer really afraid of a tiny shrew as it 

 darted hither and thither with amazing rapidity in its frantic efforts to escape. To one 

 of such I told, with a touch of irony, a curious superstition held by the Eskimo of Norton 

 Sound, as related by Mr. Nelson in his " Natural History of Alaska." 



" Those Indians claim that there is a kind of water-shrew living on the ice at sea which 

 is exactly like the common land shrew in appearance, but which is endowed with demoniac 

 quickness and power to work harm. If one of them is disturbed by a person it darts at 

 the intruder, and burrowing under the skin, works about inside at random and finally 

 enters the heart and kills him. As a consequence of this belief the hunters are in mortal 

 terror if they chance to meet a sinew on the ice at sea, and in one case that I know of a 

 hunter stood immovable on the ice for several hours until a shrew he happened to meet 

 disappeared from sight, whereupon he hurried home, and his friends all agreed that he 

 had had a very narrow escape." 



The moles are completely fossorial in their habits, and possess in a high degree the 

 traditional pugnacity of all miners. One meeting by chance a rival above ground, fights 

 with a fierceness that carried on in proportion by large animals would be really terrific. 



The earth worm forms the staple food of moles, and as this worm is accounted an 

 important factor in the formation and improvement of soils, the mole must, to that extent, 

 be considered an injury to the agriculturist. 



The disfigurement of lawns and gardens by the large quantities of soil thrown up by 

 even a single mole in a night is a serious charge, more applicable, however, to the English 

 mole than to any of ours. The still more serious indictment that our common mole eats the 

 roots of vegetable and other garden plants is likely enough a slander. A mole in a garden 

 burrows along a row of plants in order to procure the numerous grubs and insects which 

 congregate in just such places. Later a vole (meadow-mouse), entering the tunnel, finds 

 ready access to its favorite article of diet — the roots of garden vegetables. There is the 

 mole's tunnel — there are the potatoes eaten — and so the mole is condemned. 



The Ontario species are three in number. 



1. Gondylura cristata (Linn). — Star-nosed Mole. — A most unique species, owing its 



Fig. 3, The Sfcar-n sed Mole (reduced.) 

 name to about a score of radiating cartilaginous processes on the nose. Partial to moist 

 situations, and so far as my own observations go, our commonest species. Fig. 3 

 (reduced). 



