350 FIELD, FOREST AND FARM 



to arouse the fury of dogs, which have to beware 

 of its bristling back. Do not, my children, imitate 

 this evil example, but respect the hedge-hog for 

 ridding you of the cut-worm and the viper. 



"Now as to the mole, what does it eat? The best 

 way to decide the question of an animal's diet is to 

 examine the contents of its stomach. Let us, then, 

 open the mole's stomach and see for ourselves. 

 Sometimes it is found to contain red fragments of 

 the common earth-worm; sometimes a hash of bee- 

 tles, recognizable from the tough remains that have 

 resisted digestion, such as bits of claws and wing- 

 sheaths; sometimes, again, and oftener than not, a 

 marmalade of larvae, especially those of the June- 

 bug, with their distinctive signs like the mandibles 

 and the hard casing of the head. One finds, in short, 

 a little of every sort of game haunting the soil, — 

 polypods and millepeds, insects and caterpillars, 

 moths in the chrysalis, underground worms and 

 nymphs, and so on; but the minutest scrutiny fails 

 to discover a single particle of vegetable matter. 



"The mole, then, is exclusively carnivorous, and 

 furthermore it has a monstrous appetite, a perfectly 

 insatiable stomach that in twelve hours demands a 

 quantity of food equal to the animal's weight. The 

 mole's existence is one gluttonous frenzy, ever re- 

 newing itself, never appeased; a few hours' absti- 

 nence suffices to Mil the creature. To still the an- 

 guish of that stomach, which is no sooner stuffed 

 with food than it is emptied again, what can the ani- 

 mal count upon? On the grubs living in the ground, 



