The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs, snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy 20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains; and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of sand or earth of loose texture.
The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous. A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years, destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months, six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a bull-dog.
The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning, at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country to have the custom of coming daily to the surface exactly at noon. We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North American Zoology."
James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive manner:—"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a country is that against the Mole—that innocent and blessed little pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing, dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath. The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and lambs—the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."
THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
A FINE living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park, 1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England, and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair, captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for the sum of 200l. The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his "Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid. The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow, the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased by the Zoological Society.