MOLE AND HEDGEHOG. 



75 



activity underground will have abated or ceased, and few 

 hillocks remain there to face the reaping machine in harvest. 

 After all, the test question is — Have we ever seen any portion 

 of a white-corn crop showing signs of serious damage by 

 moles by the time the plant is in ear ? 



The staple food of the mole consists of earthworms, but 

 it will also eat various insects and the large grubs of beetles 

 so injurious to the roots of grass ; mice, birds, and reptiles 

 are also said to be occasionally devoured by it. Devoured ' ' 

 is a better word than "eaten" when speaking of this 

 extraordinary animal. The voracity of the mole is, indeed, 

 almost past belief. Except during the time when it retires 

 to its fortress to sleep, it is unable to live for many successive 

 hours without food. I remember once when I was at school 

 trying to keep a mole alive (in a biscuit-box filled with 

 earth, I believe), and our astonishment at the rate with which 

 it consumed worms before us within a few hours of its 

 capture. A night passed without food, however, proved 

 fatal to it, although I did not at the time realise that it had 

 actually died of starvation in less than tw^elve hours. 



Geoffrey St. Hilaire says that the mole (I quote from Bell) 

 *' does not exhibit the appetite of hunger as we find it in 

 other animals ; it amounts in it to a degree of frenzy. The 

 animal, when under its influence, is violently agitated ; it 

 throws itself on its prey as if maddened with rage ; its 

 gluttony disorders all its faculties, and nothing seems to 

 stand in the v\^ay of its intense voracity.'' 



In hard weather, during winter, when frost has driven 

 the earthworms deep down into the ground, the mole is said 

 to descend in pursuit of them and to carry on its operations 

 at a considerable depth. But it seems more probable that at 

 such seasons it spends a greater time sleeping in its winter 

 fortress (an elaborate system of chamber and galleries formed 

 in a large hillock in some secure place) than is generally 

 supposed. In light arable land the mole's feeding-runs are 



