THE MOLE. 



41 



An Enterprising Though as Captain Brown points out nothing 

 Mole. ig more fatal to the mole than excessive rain, 



which fills their subterranean galleries with water; the follow- 

 ing statement made by Mr. A. Bruce in the Linnaean Trans- 

 actions, shows that the animal is not without enterprise on 

 the water : — " On visiting the Loch of Climie, which I often 

 did, I observed in it a small island at the distance of one 

 hundred and eighty yards from the nearest land, measured 

 to be so upon the ice. Upon the island, the Earl of Airly, 

 the proprietor, has a castle and small shrubbery. I remarked 

 frequently the appearance of fresh mole casts, or hills. I for 

 some time took them for those of the water mouse, and one 

 day asked the gardener if it was so. No, said he, it was 

 the mole; and that he had caught one or two lately. Five 

 or six years ago, he caught two in traps ; and for two years 

 after this he had observed none. But, about four years ago, 

 coming ashore one summer's evening in the dusk, with the 

 Earl of Airly's butler, they saw at a short distance, upon the 

 smooth water, some animal paddling towards the island. They 

 soon closed with this feeble passenger, and found it to be 

 the common mole, led by a most astonishing instinct from 

 the castle hill, the nccurest point of land, to take possession 

 of this desert island. It had been, at the time of my visit, 

 for the space of two years quite free from any subterraneous 

 inhabitant; but the mole has, for more than a year past, 

 made its appearance again, and its operations I have since 

 been witness to." 

 The TTse of The use of the mole is often said to be far 

 the Mole, outweighed by the mischief he perpetrates, the 

 truth appearing to be that like many other animals, in his 

 own place he is valuable, out of it he is a source of danger. 

 Both conditions are illustrated by the following, which I quote 

 from Mrs. Bowdich's "Anecdotes of Animals." 



" A French naturalist of the name of Henri Lecourt devoted 

 a great part of his life to the study of the habits and struc- 



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