S£4 OBSERVATIONS ON THE MOLE. 
he detaches the earth with his strong fore-claws and snout 
from the front of the run or drift that he is making, he 
pushes it backwards, in successive quantities or loads, as 
we may call them, to the sloping hole or shaft which 
he had opened, and by main force, and successive efforts, 
heaves it up till it forms a hillock, — imitating, in this 
way, pretty exactly the operations of colliers and other 
miners ; except tha;t these employ machinery to bring their 
materials up the shaft, whereas the poor mole has to push 
all up by mere muscular exertion. A mole makes his bore 
very little wider than himself, and, in working, he seems 
to drag his materials backwards toward the shaft, and then 
push them up. He can, however, at certain places, readily 
turn himself in his road ; and he can run along it with his 
back downwards, very nearly at the same rate as when he 
has it up. Mr Fletcher has often taken moles in hi^ 
traps in this inverted position. It fnay be thought surpris- 
ing how much work one of them will do in a short time. 
He will throw up six or seven heaps or hillocks in a single 
night, each of them not weighing less, by estimation, than 
six or seven pounds, so that he may be said to remove forty 
or fifty pounds of earth in a night. And it is observable, 
that, however hard the ground may be in which he is dig- 
ging, the claws are always as sharp as needles. 
As the heaps thrown up by the moles, and the roads 
they make among the roots of the plants and the seeds 
sown, are both great deformities^ and injurious to the prov 
ductions of the garden and the field, it is an object of con- 
siderable importance to know the best and surest method 
of catching or killing these animals. Three different methods 
have been thought of, — ^poisoning ; watching the mole at 
work, and coming upon it with the foot or some instru- 
ment; and setting a trap for it. The first, I believe, is 
seldom had recourse to ; though I understand it lias some-^ 
