MOLES AND MOLE-SKINS.
[TO MR EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—In reference to the article on the above subject in the Spectator of January 31st, I beg to submit to your notice an extract taken from a recent work on Yorkshire. I was at Cawood with the writer of the book last summer, and heard him question the farmers and gamekeepers on this curious phase of the mole's economy. Like the adder's swallowing of her young, it may require the verification of careful scientific observation ; but all the persons interrogated were most emphatic about the truth of their statement. —I am,
Sir, &c., GEO. THEO. LowE. 11 Wentworth Street, Huddersfield.
-"Hereabouts in the loose sandy subsoil the mole, which is often of a creamy colour, proves very troublesome to the farmers.
U nder the molehill are three chambers, the bottom-most being the home or nest; the upper chambers are generally stocked with headless worms, a provision of the sagacious mole against a rainy day. This maiming of the worm does not destroy life, but deprives it of the power to creep away, hence the mole generally retains in its larder a fresh supply of live food. We are told by an authority that the mole lives almost wholly upon the red earthworm of the fields."—" The Old Kingdom of Elmet," by Edmund Bogg, pp. 243-44.
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