shrew now as a perfectly harmless animal, though we still retain a name for it expressive of something malignant and spiteful. I think we have reason for suspecting that a shrew new to Britain exists in this neighborhood. A pale blue shrew (sorex Daubentonii? Cuvier) has been seen about the margins of our reenes, and the deep marsh ditches cut for draining the water from the low lands of the Severn; and something of the same kind, in a half-digested state, has been found in the stomach of the heron. If it exist with us, a similar tract of land in more fenny countries may contain it plentifully, though it has as yet escaped detection. The mole,[41] want, mouldwarper or mouldturner (talpa europea), is common with us, as it appears to be in most places; and no creature gives more certain indication of its presence, haunting, from preference, such places as its predecessors have done, though years may have intervened since they were frequented, and rains, and the treading of heavy cattle, have compressed to solid earth the ancient runs; and however assiduously we may destroy them, should they appear again, it will probably be in the same places that have been formerly perforated by others. The earth that these animals eject from their runs, being obtained from very near the surface, and finely pulverized, has tempted me more than once to have it collected for my green-house plants, but not with the success that I had conjectured. Some persons have advocated the cause of moles, as being beneficial to vegetation, by loosening the soil about the roots of plants. Evelyn and others, again, censure them as injurious creatures; and there is a strange narration in Buffon, accusing them of eating all the acorns of a newly-set soil.[42] I am not aware of any benefit occasioned by their presence; their warpings certainly give our pastures in the spring a very unsightly appearance, and in grounds designed to be mowed, occasion much trouble, by obliging us frequently to spread and remove them; and in newly-sown corn-lands, they disturb by their runnings the earth at the roots of the grain. But, perhaps, these trifling complaints, these almost imaginary grievances, are the only evils that can be attributed to them. In those wild creatures that are not immediately applicable to our use or amusement, we are more generally inclined to seek out their bad than their good qualities; and though I cannot produce any instance in which the utility of the mole is manifested, yet it is reasonable to conclude, that they are eminently so, either directly or collaterally, nature having provided in an especial manner for a constant supply,[43] and their increase is prodigious when they are not molested. I have killed for two years in succession, between forty and fifty each season, in a very few acres of ground; and notwithstanding all our stratagems for their destruction, and the ease with which they are entrapped, still plenty