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THE MOLE [Talpa Europoea, Linn.). 



By J. E. Harting, f.l.s., f.z.s. 



Although seldom seen above ground, and more rarely 

 heard, few of the smaller British mammals come more 

 prominently under notice of agriculturists than the Mole. 

 There is scarcely any part of the British Islands where the 

 soil is at all favourable to its working, from which it is 

 absent ; though naturally as we travel northwards into coun- 

 ties where rocks and boulders abound we gradually lose trace 

 of it, or at least find it only in fertile valleys lying between 

 the hills. 



In the second edition of his " British Quadrupeds," 

 published in 1874, the late Thomas Bell remarked that the 

 Mole is not found in the north of Scotland nor in the islands 

 of Orkney and Shetland. This view now requires some 

 modification, for the late Edward Alston in his Notes on the 

 Fauna of Scotland, published in 1880, pointed out that the 

 range of this little animal had been considerably extended ot 

 late years, and that it was to be found in places suited to its 



