Vermin of the Farm. 
463 
the money for small holdings should also be held responsible 
for the failures and losses. The country would thus have the 
security of the instinct of self-preservation in ratepayers, or 
whoever else was responsible, that large sums would not be ex- 
pended iu utopian, retrograde, and losing schemes. 
J. B. Lawes. 
J. H. Gilbert. 
VERMIN OF THE FARM.— II. 
In a former article under this heading (Journal, Vol. III., Third 
Series, 1892, Part II., pp. 205-231) it was remarked that the 
vermin of the farm might be arranged in four groups — namely 
(1) the graminivorous rodents ; (2) the insectivorous mole and 
hedgehog (the shrews being harmless) ; (3) the carnivorous 
destroyers of poultry and other live stock ; and (4) the so-called 
winged vermin, which are more or less omnivorous in their 
habits. Having dealt with the first-named group and with the 
shrews, it is proposed in the present article to give some account 
of the mole, of the hedgehog, and of the weasel family, and to 
refer briefly to the fox and to the badger. 
At the present day, when such close attention is paid to 
details of structure as a guide to the classification of animals, 
and when in the case of the mammalia the form of the skull 
and the dentition are so strongly relied upon to distinguish the 
several orders in that class of vertebrates, it is interesting to find 
that nearly 300 years ago the peculiar dentition of the insecti- 
vorous mole (Talpa Europcea) had already attracted the attention 
of English naturalists. The Rev. Edward Topsel, Chaplain of 
St. Botolph’s, Aldersgate, in his curious Historie of Four-footed 
Beastes, published in 1607, quaintly remarks: 
“ I do utterly dissent from all them that holde opinion that the Mole, or 
Want, is of the kinde of Myse, for that all of them in generall, both one and 
other, have two large crooked fore-teeth, which is not in Moles, and therefore 
wanting those as the inseparable propriety of kind, we will take it for graunted 
that it pertaineth not to that ranke or order of four-footed beastes ” (p. 499). 
He clearly perceived a difference between the long curved 
incisors of the Rodentia, or gnawing mammals, and the short 
sharp front teeth of the insectivora, although he failed to express 
it scientifically.* The distinction, however, to which he alluded 
' An ezcellent paper on the Dentition of the Mole by the late Mr. Spence 
Bate, with six plates, will be found in the Journal of the Odontological Society, 
1867 (pp. 261-294). An abstract of it is given in the Annals and Magazine of 
Natural Sistory for June of that year (pp. 377-381). 
