312 



The Mole. 



Weasels kill Moles — as long ago remarked by Gilbert 

 White in his fortieth letter to Thomas Pennant — so do Owls, 

 when they can catch them above ground on summer nights ; 

 so do Buzzards. The common Buzzard is a capital mole- 

 catcher, and in the vicinity of mole-hills will take up a 

 position on some low bough of a tree, from which it will 

 glide and seize a Mole the moment the earth moves on its 

 approach to the surface. In this way [i.e., by watching and 

 jumping down) Buzzards destroy not only Moles, but numbers 

 of rats and mice. 



But the Weasel, the Owl, and the Buzzard are thoughtlessly 

 trapped, poisoned, or shot, on the score of their interference 

 with game, the result being that the farms are overrun 

 with rats, mice, and Moles, and the farmers in self-defence 

 have to pay for their destruction instead of leaving them to 

 the supervision of " nature's police." 



It becomes, then, a matter for consideration how best to 

 get rid of Moles on land where, for the reasons above 

 stated, they have unduly increased. 



Macgillivray states that every Mole appropriates to itself 

 a particular tract of ground, in which it forms a kind of 

 fortress under a hillock, but this we are not able to confirm. 



On the contrary, it is certain that many use the same 

 *'runs " in common, just as rats and mice do. This is made 

 evident from the fact that a mole-catcher will trap Mole after 

 Mole in the same " run " to the number of a dozen or more 

 resetting his trap time after time nearly in the same spot. 



To discover which are the most frequented " runs," the 

 plan is to mark every fresh mole-hill by a light pressure 

 of the foot, and to examine it next morning to see if a Mole 

 has passed by and partially obliterated the depression by 

 fresh upheaval. In two or three days it will be seen what 

 part of the ground is most used, and there the traps may be 

 set. Although iron traps may give less trouble to set, the 

 kind of mole-trap most in vogue is the old-fashioned wooden 

 one — a semicylinder of wood, with grooved rings at each 

 <end in which are fixed horsehair nooses kept in position by 

 .a peg in the centre and strained by a cord attached above 

 ground to a pliant stick bent downwards. As the Mole 



