In former times the _skins_ of moles were in great esteem for many purposes both useful and ornamental. They were employed for the linings of winter garments, and for trimmings in several kinds of dress and were even made into coverlets for beds. At present, although, by a late invention, the down or fur, which is as soft as the finest velvet, has been adopted in the manufacture of hats, they are so little esteemed in this country that the mole-catchers in general can find no sale for them. The _flesh_ of the mole is eaten in some countries, but the animals are too small to be used with any advantage as food. Moles live only in burrows or galleries which they dig, under the surface of the earth, with their strong fore feet, and they are chiefly caught to prevent the injury which they are imagined to do to the farmer by throwing up the mould, in little hillocks, in different parts of his grounds. The mode of catching them is by traps placed in their galleries, by persons employed for that purpose, and who are paid for their trouble at a stipulated rate per dozen. Moles feed on roots, worms, and the grubs or caterpillars of insects. They are generally considered to be both blind and deaf, but they possess every requisite organ both for sight and hearing: indeed their quickness of hearing is such that they take alarm, and seek for safety in flight, at even the most distant approach of danger. Moles are believed, by some persons, to be useful and not injurious to the farmer. In cold clayey land their operations are supposed to have a tendency to drain the soil, and to be beneficial in communicating air to the roots of plants; they are also thought to be serviceable by raising fresh mould upon grass-land, and feeding on the grubs of several kinds of insects which subsist on the roots of the grass. 67. _The HEDGE-HOG or URCHIN_ (Erinaceus europæus) _is a small British quadruped, the upper parts of which are covered with spines, each about an inch long, and the under parts covered with hair._ These animals are of considerable utility in several points of view. If kept and allowed to run about in rooms that are infested with beetles, cock-roaches, or crickets, they will destroy the whole of them. Some persons imagine that they will devour mice, but this wants authentication. A hedge-hog which was kept at the Angel Inn at Felton, Northumberland, was tamed, and employed as a turnspit (40). The _flesh_ of the hedge-hog is occasionally used as food, and is said to be very delicate eating. The _skin_, which was frequently employed by the ancients as a clothes brush, is now used by farmers, in some parts of the Continent, to put on the muzzles of calves which they are about to wean, that the cow may not permit them to suck. Several of the old writers have related accounts of very extraordinary, and at the same time very absurd, medicinal effects from different parts of this animal.