Animal life of the British Isles : $b a pocket guide to the mammals, reptiles and batrachians of wayside and woodland — John Shaqi
Animal life of the British Isles : $b a pocket guide to the mammals, reptiles and batrachians of wayside and woodlandStep, Edward
History
Animal life of the British Isles : $b a pocket guide to the mammals, reptiles and batrachians of wayside and woodland
Step, Edward
Animals -- Great Britain
The teeth should be examined. In the upper jaw there are six incisors
of equal size--three on each side--two comparatively large canines of
triangular shape and flattened from the sides, eight little premolars
and six molars. In the lower jaw the dentition is somewhat puzzling,
as the canines are similar to the incisors and the first premolar is
developed into a suitable mate for the upper canine. These are not
teeth designed for gnawing like those of the Rat and Rabbit; they are
for biting insects and other small creatures, and agree in general with
those of the Shrews. The formula stands thus:
_i 3/3, c 1/1, p 4/4, m 3/3 = 44_.
The adult Mole is a slave to his appetite, and if kept without food for
only a few hours he dies of starvation. Knowing this, the old writers
averred that he kept a store of bitten worms so that he might draw upon
it on emergency; but this statement has never been substantiated by
careful observers.
Every one is familiar with the diagrams of what was styled fancifully
the Mole's Fortress, as though it were a stronghold held by force
against an enemy. There is really no more reason for calling it a
fortress than for applying the same term to a Rabbit's burrow or a
bird's nest. The idea upon which the originators of the fortress story
worked was that the molehill was a place of intricate passages where
the invader could be given the slip: Le Court, the French inventor of
the term, whose account was published by Antoine Cadet de Vaux in
1803, described its interior as having a central chamber surrounded
by two galleries, one above, the other below, connected by five nearly
equidistant passages. From the upper and smaller gallery three similar
passages gave access to the central hall, at the bottom of which was a
bolt-hole communicating with the main run. Plans and elevations, as an
architect would describe them, were made of these details, and for a
hundred years every writer on the Mole reproduced these illustrations
without doubting their absolute accuracy. It was so much more easy to
accept them than to patiently explore and accurately draw the actual
structure. Of course, what these writers described as a fortress must
not be confused with the "mole-heaves" or "tumps" thrown up at frequent
intervals to get rid of the earth from a newly excavated run. These
are only a few inches in height. The home of the Mole--the molehill
proper--is about a foot high and about three feet broad in any
direction. This, as a rule, will be found partly sheltered by a
bush, sometimes well out in a pasture, and always on the line of the
Mole's high-road, which lies deeper than the newer side runs he is
always excavating for hunting purposes. These are but little below
the surface, in the richer soil where there are more worms and grubs
and where the dug-out earth is easily pushed up to the surface by the
pressure of his head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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