612 



KEPORT OP STATE GEOLOGIST. 



Habits. — The long ridges of loose earth and occasional heaps or 

 ''mole hills" which mark the work of moles are familiar to every 

 farmer boy. However, there are very few people who really know 

 anything about their habits. 



Bom in a chamber which is hollowed out in compact soil at a 

 depth of eight or ten inches, the young moles are reared in dark- 

 ness, learn to find food for themselves, take up their domestic du- 

 ties, live on to , old age and die without ever having felt the direct 

 rays of the sun or the breath of a fresh breeze. Their life is one 

 of almost ceaseless activity, and the amount of dirt moved by a 

 mole in a lifetime must be enormous. 



Their method of making tunnels has been described a number 

 of times. The long claws of the hind feet are braced firmly in 

 the bottom of the tunnel. The broad fore feet are placed, palms 

 outward, beside the neck and they, together with pointed snout, 

 are thrust forward into the compact soil. The feet are forced back- 

 ward and outward and the head upward. The soil is, therefore, 

 broken upward, and at the same time a quantity is pushed behind 

 the animal. This is allowed to accumulate until several times the 

 bulk and weight of the animal, when he pushes it back along the 

 burrow and up to the surface to form the familiar mole hill. Where 

 the soil is loose and the animal works near the top, most of the 

 earth is broken upward and little is carried out. In short burrows, 

 made only to catch a worm and not used again, the loose soil is 

 sometimes left, and hence the hills are few in number as compared 

 with the amount of earth actually moved. 



Testimony varies as to the exact relation of the mole to the 

 farmer. It is certainly blamed for much damage which it does not 

 do. This is due to the fact that the pine mouse {Microtus pine- 

 torum scalopsoides and M. p. auricularis) make somewhat similar 

 tunnels and also use those of the moles. 



On one occasion I was told that moles were eating the sweet po- 

 tatoes in a certain garden. I insisted that they were not, because 

 moles never eat sweet potatoes. As proof to the contrary, the mis- 

 tress of the garden showed me their runways and a number of 

 partially eaten sweet potatoes. I set traps and caught a young pine 

 mouse and later found where a litter of young had been reared 

 under the garden fence. They had done considerable damage to 

 the vegetables and the blame had been laid at the door of the inno- 

 cent moles, of which ihoro had probably not been one in the garden 

 all summer. 



Moles are also blamed for following corn rows and eating the 



