4 8 
MAMMALIA. 
Order INSECTIVORA. Family Talpid^. 
CONDYLURA CRISTATA Limbus. 
Star-nosed Mole. 
The Star-nosed Mole is a common animal along the outskirts of 
the Adirondacks, where it seems to manifest a predilection for 
moist situations, being usually found in low ground and in the 
neighborhood of streams. Its food consists almost wholly of the 
earthworm, and of various insects which it discovers in its mean- 
derings through the soil. In general, its habits are much like those 
of the Shrew Mole, though it does not, apparently, make as extensive 
excavations, and the “mole hills” along the lines of its galleries 
are larger. 
In gardens and ploughed ground they often work so near the 
surface that a ridge of loose earth is upheaved along the course of 
their tunnels. In meadows and pasture lands, on the contrary, 
the galleries are not marked by surface ridges, for the simple reason 
that they cannot readily force their way through the tough sod, but 
excavate their burrows immediately beneath. Late in the autumn, 
when the ground becomes frozen to the depth of two or three 
inches, the Moles sink their galleries into the soft earth below, 
and as winter advances they doubtless continue to deepen them 
sufficiently to avoid the frozen ground. Thus both Moles and 
earthworms escape the severe temperature of our northern winter 
by withdrawing below the depth to which the frost penetrates. It 
sometimes happens here that a period of severe cold sets in before 
much snow has fallen, in which case the ground becomes frozen to 
the depth of two feet or more. But this state of things is not apt 
to continue, for advancing winter is almost certain to bring with it 
a large amount of snow, which, as is well known, keeps out the cold 
and dissipates the frost already in the earth. I have known the 
ground to be frozen for two feet below the surface when a fall of 
about four feet of snow took place. Within two weeks afterward 
