68 Field-Labourers 



Putting aside for the present the mole's services as a 

 devourer of injurious insects, which are certainly great, 

 we may perhaps admit that we do not now need him as 

 ploughman, as we have our own ways of doing his 

 work. But it would be very rash to say that we could 

 dispense with him altogether; and even if we could 

 now, this need not make us overlook the share which he 

 has had in the past, and in unoccupied lands still has, 

 in preparing the soil for our use. 



Wherever a mole lives the organic matter in the soil 

 must be continually receiving increase, for it lives 

 almost entirely on animal food — such as worms, grubs, 

 insects, as well as mice, dead birds, lizards, frogs ; and 

 as it is extraordinarily voracious, large numbers of these 

 must be consumed, their remains, digested or not, 

 being left in the earth. Large quantities of vegetable 

 matter are also carried into its nest by every mole 

 every year, and there they are, of course, left to decay. 

 When, therefore, one thinks of the thousands of moles 

 still existing, and the many more thousands and mil- 

 lions of past countless generations, every one of which 

 lives, or lived, the same sort of life, always burrowing, 

 always feeding, and always making nests year by year, 

 it is evident that their effect upon the soil — in places 

 where they are, or have been, plentiful — can certainly 

 not be small. 



Some might like to be rid of them now. though pro- 

 bably, if they had their will, they would find cause to 

 regret it; but in unoccupied land the mole has cer- 

 tainly done much service. 



And now we turn to another very different set of 

 workers, most unlikely ones we should say at first 

 sight, who are helping to improve and prepare some of 



