Peacock : Mammalia of Bottesford. 



i6 7 



in Lincolnshire that the Hedgehog" sucks cows, and it is 

 also said to carry off fruit, apples especially, impaled on its 

 prickles. Persons of known accuracy and reliability are 

 willing" to bear witness to having" seen these things. A few 

 years ago my sister Mabel was told by the groom employed 

 by a friend that, in one of his former situations, he and 

 several other members of the family in which he lived saw 

 a Hedgehog carrying off fruit on its spines from the orchard. 

 I am an agnostic in regard to these two points, for I 

 have no personal experience; but still I think them worth 

 recording, though I am told both ideas are as old as our 

 race. 



Mole. Talpa europaea L. Has increased to a very great 

 extent since 1865, and now nearly the whole parish is over- 

 run with it. When I was a child they were confined to the 

 sands and peaty soils or warp by the Trent. I saw a white 

 one that was caught on Nocton Heath, Div. 13, South 

 Lincolnshire. It was the second the mole-catcher had taken 

 in 40 years spent in killing them. Those found on Crosby 

 Warren, a little to the north of Bottesford parish, have 

 a patch of yellow rather longer than a sixpence, but not 

 quite so wide, on the middle of the belly. The late Sir 

 Robert Sheffield's mole-catcher says he never finds them 

 marked in this way anywhere else. On our warp farm, 

 Which was then 420 acres, 3,596 were killed in three years 

 by traps. The Moles are friend's to the farmer, speaking 

 generally, but where land lies below the high water level of 

 the river, beck, and drains they must be killed off", for they 

 are very thirsty animals, and have a way of piercing banks 

 just above summer water level. Their neatly-drilled runs 

 soon expand in a flood to a wide tunnel, and finally a huge 

 gap in the banks, through which the whole country side is 

 flooded. 



Shrew. Sorex araneus L. Found all over the parish and 

 district. 



Lesser Shrew. Sorex minutus L. Is rarely seen at 

 Bottesford. I have found it dead in the autumn on foot- 

 paths. The best way of identifying this species in an old 

 woodland neighbourhood is from the pellets of the Barn 

 Owl (S/r/x flummea L.), as Mr. Lionel L. Adams pointed 

 out in the 'Journal of the Northamptonshire Natural 

 History Society, 5 June [898. 



, 11)01 June 1. 



