By the Rev. A. C. Smith. 



317 



in an instant, to work into the earth by means of its snout and fore 

 feet, and thowing up its hind feet to dive (as it were) below the 

 surface, and disappear into its own element. Not so easy is it to 

 determine how it forms the casts with which we are all so familiar. 

 That the earth is pushed up from below, and through a very small 

 orifice, is certain ; but how the operation is performed, has baffled, I 

 believe, up to this time, every observer, while the appearance of the 

 heap, if you examine it carefully, is exactly as if it was formed by a 

 deposit from above. 



Having now sketched an outline of the life-history, and touched 

 upon the general habits of the Moles, it remains to speak of the 

 benefit and the injury they do to man, to describe the little pec- 

 cadilloes of which they are sometimes guilty, and then to enlarge on 

 their counterbalancing virtues. I will turn first to the mischief 

 they sometimes innocently effect ; and acknowledge that in a turnip, 

 swede, or mangold-wurzel field, when they burrow just below the 

 plants, undermining whole rows of them and causing them to wither, 

 it would be surprizing indeed if their presence was relished by the 

 farmer : neither when they run their galleries (as they will in light 

 soils) just below the surface in a corn field, loosening the earth at 

 the roots, and thus depriving the grain of the moisture it should 

 derive from the ground, are they in any better odour with the agri- 

 culturist : again, in a well-drained pasture, when they burrow into 

 the drains, and disturb the carefully-planned system for reclaiming 

 marshy meadows ; or in the case of the embankment of a canal or 

 reservoir, which they perforate with their runs, till they have almost 

 honeycombed it ; or in the eyes of the gardener, who is vexed at the 

 unsightly heaps unceremoniously thrown up on his neatly-kept lawn, 

 or even within the precincts of his flower-beds ; they are certainly 

 unwelcome visitors. But, after all, these injuries are but rare and 

 casual and of a trifling nature, with the single exception of interfering 

 with drains, which I acknowledge to be a more serious matter. Then 

 think of the immense amount of good they are always doing, acting* 

 as scavengers below the surface ! what a vast army of wire-worms, 

 grubs, and other noxious creatures do they not consume ! pests which 

 would infallibly injure the roots and the com of the agriculturist, 



