66 Field-Labourers 



mouth, growing narrower farther down, but they make 

 up in numbers for what they lack in size. Each Gopher 

 lives alone in a burrow of its own ; there are separate 

 burrows to hold the winter stores, and large numbers 

 seem to be made either for temporary refuges, or from 

 a pure love of digging which can never be satisfied, for 

 the deserted burrows are many more than can be 

 accounted for by the size of the colonies. 



Other burrowers, better known in the Old World, 

 are the marmots, which make very large and rather 

 complicated burrows, and have quite riddled the rocks 

 in Turkestan, in some parts of which they abound; 

 and others again of the same great family of rodents, 

 or 'gnawers,' the Gerboas, have honey -combed the 

 sides of mountains in South Africa, and possess such 

 strong teeth that in the north they even gnaw through 

 the thin layer of stone beneath the sand, and thus do 

 some of the very first work of the pioneer labourers. 



Every country, indeed, seems to have its special 

 burrower or burrowers, and everywhere their work has 

 similar results, often troublesome enough, where man 

 has established himself, but doing a useful and im- 

 portant part of the work of the farm, of which man 

 reaps the benefit in after years. 



In England the field burrower with which we are 

 most familiar, unpleasantly familiar, too, is the common 

 mole. No matter where he lives, the mole's labours are 

 not anywhere looked at with a friendly eye by farmer 

 or gardener; and so fierce is the war waged against 

 him that it is matter for wonder how he has managed 

 to escape extermination. Mole-catchers boast of having 

 slain many tens of thousands, one declaring that he 

 had trapped twelve hundred in six months. Yet still 



