A Plea for the Moles. 



and the (lowers and the vegetables and even turf of the gardener 

 ten-fold, aye, 1 venture to say a Imndred-fold more than the little 

 quadruped which is persecuted while they are passed over ; and all, 

 forsooth, because the heaps he throws up are apparent and open, 

 while their work of destruction is hidden from view, but is as in- 

 jurious as it is insidious and silent. I should scarcely have completed 

 my catalogue of the benefits and injuries which moles do to man, 

 if I omitted to mention the fatal results which have sometimes 

 occurred from the horse of the incautious rider having put his 

 foot in a mole-cast, and come down with more or less injury to 

 the horseman. Notoriously this was the case with one at least of 

 the Kings of England, viz., William III., who certainly lost his life 

 by this mishap. As to whether the death of this monarch was a 

 benefit or an injury to the people of England, I must leave everybody 

 to form his or her own opinion : but certain it is that from the date 

 of William the Third's fatal accident, the adherents of the house of 

 Stuart became on a sudden great admirers of the little quadruped 

 whose history we have been considering, and in allusion to what they 

 were pleased to consider their delivery from an usurper, one of their 

 favourite after-dinner toasts was, " The health of the little gentleman 

 in black velvet.'" That however may be deemed matter of opinion, 

 I return to matters of fact : and that the value of the Mole is no 

 fancy of the prejudiced Naturalist nor an untenable theory which 

 cannot be supported by evidence, has been amply proved by those 

 who are best able to judge, the enlig'htened agriculturists who have 

 not only taken pains to preserve this little quadruped on their lands, 

 but have gone to considerable expense to procure and turn down alive 

 as many as they could collect. Doubtless by so doing- they often 

 incurred the ridicule of their more prejudiced neighbours, but they 

 derived at the same time the solid benefit of tbe destruction of 

 injurious worms and gTubs from their lands, and consequently heavier 

 crops than they would otherwise have had, as they have taken pains 

 to make known. 



In some of the more fenny districts in the eastern coimties of 

 England, such as Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, where 

 vast tracts of valuable land have been reclaimed from the water- by 



