Once or twice a year the female mole gives birth to from three to five young. They grow rapidly, and remain with the mother for one or two months. Then they begin digging on their own account and require no further attention. They have been found to be very difficult to keep in captivity by reason of their insatiable appetite.
As the mole is obliged constantly to construct new hillocks in order to secure its food, it cannot long hide itself from its enemies. It digs horizontal shafts at a slight depth from the surface, and in order to remove the earth it has dug up, it throws up the well-known hillocks. Many a beautiful lawn has been nearly ruined by the handiwork of this little creature, who likes to bore its snout into loose soil and throw it backward with its powerful forepaws. In a single night it can undo much of the labor of the gardener. In loose ground the animal is said to work with really admirable rapidity. Oken kept a mole in a box of sand for three months, and observed the animal work its way in it nearly as rapidly as a fish glides through the water, snout foremost, using the forepaws to throw the sand to the side and the hind limbs to push it backward. Lecourt, wishing to investigate the speed of a mole in its conduits, set up in a row a number of heavy straws in the main conduit, arranged so that the mole could not run along the passages without touching them. To the tops of these straws he fastened small paper flags, and when the mole was occupied in its hunting ground, he frightened it with the sound of a bugle, and thus caused it to run into the main conduit. Then the little flags fell down one after another, the instant the mole touched them, and the observer and his assistants had an opportunity to correctly record the speed of its course for a short distance.
C. C. M.
| ||
| FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. | COMMON MOLE. ¾ Life-size. | COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO. |
THE OAK.
What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade is his!
There needs no crown to mark the forest's king;
How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss!
Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute bring,