152 



KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



THE LOVER OF NATURE. 



He joys — when the sunbeam breaks 



O'er field and flood — 

 And the matin bird awakes 



In lyric mood — 

 To stroll by the murmuring; river, 

 Where the breeze-wooed osiers quiver! 



He loves — when the zephyr strays 



At bright noontide — 

 To mark how the fleet bee plays 



Each bloom beside ; 

 How from flower to flower it wings, 

 And sweets from each blossom brings ! 



He loves — when faint twilight blends 



The day and night — 

 When the bird, outwearied, wends 



Its homeward flight — 

 To muse, how the West enfolds 

 That monarch the East upholds ! 



He loves — when Night's spirits wander, 



In mystic sheen ; 

 'Mid fair Nature hush'd — to ponder 



O'er what hath been — 

 How earth like a charnel seems, 

 When man, in death's image, dreams ! 



All these are the charmful hours, 



With beauty fraught — 

 When the poet all outpours 



His stream of thought ! — 

 Lone hours ! — when the song he weaves 

 Outwhispers the life he breathes ! 



lUuinn. 



The Naturalist, No. 37. 



and Sons. 



G-roombridge 



The opening paper in this popular Mis- 

 cellany is by our good friend J. M'Intosh, 

 Esq., and embodies some of his keen obser- 

 vations on the Mole (Talpa Vulgaris). This 

 useful little animal, often before commented 

 on in our pages, has hitherto been cruelly 

 slaughtered, because of the imagined injury 

 be has done to the ground. It is now clearly 

 demonstrated that he is the farmer's best 

 friend ! 



As we usually extract some interesting 

 matter from this periodical, we can hardly do 

 better than record what Mr. M'Intosh says 

 about 



THE UTILITY OF THE COMMON MOLE. 



It is a fact well known, that man, from the 

 earliest ages, has been at war with his own class ; 

 it need not then surprise us that his arm should 

 be lifted against numbers of his friends and 

 natural allies ; but such is the fact. He wages a 

 perpetual war against the Book, the Owl, the 

 Sparrow, &c, and contrives "artful engines" to 

 entrap the useful Mole, who taught him draining 

 and sub-cultivation, and from whom, some day, he 

 will learn a greater lesson, and call him a prophet ; 

 that is, when he has done hanging him. Wherever 



I go, I see trees and bushes in the corners of 

 fields, and by gates of plantations, the hedges by 

 the highway side, yea, even at the door-side of 

 some ruthless and ignorant biped, who calls him- 

 self " lord of the creation," covered with the dead 

 bodies of poor Moles, killed without mercy or judg- 

 ment. The only excuse the farmer makes for 

 destroying the Mole is, " that their hills look un- 

 sightly ;" " that they eat the seed-corn, and destroy 

 the roots of the same in the construction of their 

 hills;" and " that they stop up their drains." 



Now, in answer to the first of these charges, I 

 only wish, for the sake of the farmer, and the 

 welfare of his fellow-creatures, that there was 

 nothing more unsightly on the generality of their 

 farms than Mole hills. Look at the essence of 

 their manure-heaps; the effluvium of gas which is 

 suffered to escape from them is not only wasteful 

 altogether, but is lost to useful vegetation, and 

 what is still worse, fills the atmosphere with par- 

 ticles injurious to health, and often destructive to 

 life. The evaporation from the farm-yard robs 

 the farmer of part of his substance, starves his 

 crops, and it is well if it does not, moreover, 

 poison him and his family by its contaminating 

 influence. Some receptacles for manure are so 

 offensive, tha'. if they do not generate typhus 

 fever, in its worst form — which, I fear, is fre- 

 quently the case — they at least cause languor and 

 debility; and it is a fact well known, that these 

 exhalations, so injurious to animal life, are the 

 essence of vegetable life; and the volatile sub- 

 stance, which offends our senses and injures our 

 health, if arrested in its transit by the hand of 

 skilful industry, may be so modified in the great 

 laboratory of nature, as to greet us in the fragrance 

 of a flower, regale us in the luscious peach, pear, 

 or plum, or furnish the stamina of life in sub- 

 stantial viands from the field and stall of the culti- 

 vator. Again, look at the dirty hedges and the 

 filthy ditches, &c, which to me are ten thousand 

 times more unsightly and unprofitable than so 

 many acres of Mole-hills. 



I entirely agree with Mr. E. Jesse, in his 

 "Natural History," page 137, when he asserts 

 that Moles were intended to be beneficial to man- 

 kind, ^heep invariably thrive better, and are more 

 healthy on those pastures where Mole-hills are 

 most abundant, owing to the wild thyme, and 

 other salubrious herbs, which grow upon those 

 heaps of earth. The healthy state of sheep is 

 particularly remarkable on the extensive pastures 

 of Lincolnshire ; and there'Mole-hills are extremely 

 abundant. Deer, likewise, appear to be benefited 

 by their existence in their pastures. It is asserted 

 as a fact that, after the Mole-hills had been de- 

 stroyed in a park which belonged to the Earl of 

 Essex, in Herefordshire, the deer in it never 

 throve. To use the words of James Hogg, better 

 known as the "Ettrick Shepherd :" — " The most 

 unnatural persecution that ever was raised in this 

 country is that against the Mole, that innocent 

 and blessed little pioneer, who enriches our pas- 

 tures annually with the first top-dressing, dug 

 with great pains and labor from the fattest soil 

 beneath. The advantage of this top-dressing is 

 so apparent, and so manifest to the eye of every 

 unprejudiced observer, that it is really amazing 

 how our countrymen should have persisted, now 

 nearly half a century, in the most manly and 



