GENERAL NOTES 
115 
GENERAL NOTES 
ANOTHER OPOSSUM TAKEN IN VERMONT 
In the May, 1921, issue of the Journal of Mammalogy the writer recorded the 
taking of an opossum at East Dorset, Vermont, the previous December. Another 
of the animals, a large male, was captured in a fox trap late in October, 1921, at 
Mount Horrid in Rochester, Vermont, by Dexter W. Kathan of Putney, Vermont. 
The second animal was taken about 45 miles north of the scene of the first capture. 
Both opossums had withstood considerable cold weather and snow. How they 
got into northern New England is an unsolved mystery, as inquiry in many sources 
has failed to disclose any one who has had them in captivity. — George L. Kirk, 
Rutland^ Vermont. 
SOME HABITS OP THE PRAIRIE MOLE, SCALOPUS AQUATICUS MACHRINUS 
The prairie mole (Scalopus aquations machrinus) is not uncommon along the 
Mississippi and lower Wisconsin Rivers in southwestern Wisconsin, where it 
particularly favors the more sandy bottomlands above high water. At a place 
known as White City Resort, which lies about 1| miles north of the Illinois-Wis- 
consin boundary, and almost directly across the Mississippi from the most north- 
erly parts of the city of Dubuque, Iowa, one was trapped in a Nash mole-trap 
the evening of August 5, 1920. Only a portion of the skin of the flank of the mole 
was caught in the trap, so the animal was practically uninjured, and I was able to 
keep him alive and make a few observations on his habits until the next morning, 
when it became necessary to prepare him for preservation in the U. S. Biological 
Survey Collection. 
The mole exhibited all the strength accredited to his tribe. The cover of my 
heavy field telescope weighed probably 10 pounds, yet he easily moved it with his 
powerful fore legs when crowding between it and the wall. His efforts were 
always to dig down, or follow along the edge of a board, or under some object. 
Contact over his entire back seemed in a measure to answer the purpose of his 
runway, but contact on only a small part of his back acted as an irritant. I laid 
a mattress on the floor and he took particular delight in “digging under” it. He 
would raise the mattress and crawl its entire length; and under this mattress was 
his favorite resting place. I put him in a sink and he seemed particularly at- 
tracted to the drain holes, placing his nose first in one little circular opening, then 
in another, and at times resting for 15 or 20 minutes with his nose in one of the little 
holes in the drain-pipe sieve. His method of defense was mostly by pushing 
away the offender with his powerful fore feet, and, in his efforts to accomplish 
this, he would frequently follow the point of attack around over his back, and roll 
entirely over. He would, of course, use his teeth occasionally, but not persis- 
tently. He did not care for raisins, bat flesh, or cucumber rind, but ate a few 
cracker crumbs, and especially relished uncooked rolled oats, of which he ate 
what seemed a prodigious amount for such a small mammal. While he was eating, 
his proboscis-like nose came into play, it being used to locate each grain of oat- 
meal and to draw the food into the mouth, not unlike the way an elephant would 
use its trunk. — ^HartlbyH. T. Jackson, U. S. Biological Survey, Washington, D. C, 
