The mother mole has from four to six little ones at a litter, and she has two litters each year, one in April and one in August. Thus we see that moles multiply rapidly. The mother mole is very careful of her children. The large domed room is their nursery, and she makes them a soft bed. The little moles grow quickly, and in a few weeks are weaned, as they have become able to feed themselves. When they leave their nursery the digging instinct develops in them, and they at once set about making a dome and galleries, and going to housekeeping each one for itself. While the fur of the mole is exceedingly pretty the skin is so small and delicate that very little use can be made of it, though sometimes it is used for gloves, purses, bags, caps, and mittens. In England, where moles abound, men called “mole-catchers” go about with spades and traps and catch and kill the moles. The mole is the most hungry and ravenous in proportion to its size and weakness of all mammals. Hunger seems to be a madness with it. Moles eat snails and are very partial to frogs, but oddly enough they will not touch toads. A mole will eat the dead body of a bird, mouse, or small snake, if it finds these in its rambles. If two moles are shut up together without food one will kill and devour the other. Moles drink very freely. These creatures seldom appear at the surface of the ground. Now and then they will come out of their galleries by night, but strong light is painful to them. Except for attacking each other when imprisoned and very hungry, moles are quiet and gentle in disposition. No creature, however, is harder to tame and keep in captivity, not because of any violence or uneasiness of disposition, but because of its dislike for daylight, and its need of darkness, coolness, and the slight moisture of the earth below the surface. A mole shut up in a room or box seems seized with a terrible homesickness for its underground haunts, pines away, and soon dies. It has been stated that a mole will die if left without food for ten or twelve hours, and that moles eat only animal food, refusing all vegetable substances. Though individual moles may have been found of which this is true, the statements are incorrect as applied to _all_ moles. The mole which Tom brought me, I put into a thick pasteboard box with some air-holes cut in the cover. I put in the box a little flat pan of water, and Tom insisted upon giving the animal some grains of corn and wheat. The mole did not touch these grains, but drank some water. After it had fasted sixteen hours, I gave it boiled rice, which it refused. In two hours more I gave it bread soaked in milk, and of that it ate a little.