. Animal life in field and garden . to the searchers eye. On account of themoles incessant comings and goings the roots ofany plants growing there are more injured than arethose over the ordinary tunnels made by the ani-mal; consequently, the grass has an unhealthy, yel-lowish look. Once thispassage is known—andthe strip of yellowgrass points it out—themole can be caught atany time. A trap is setinside the to pass througheither to get out or tocome in, the mole cannot fail to be taken sooner orlater. That is plain enough, said Louis. I see nowhow easy it would be to catch moles
. Animal life in field and garden . to the searchers eye. On account of themoles incessant comings and goings the roots ofany plants growing there are more injured than arethose over the ordinary tunnels made by the ani-mal; consequently, the grass has an unhealthy, yel-lowish look. Once thispassage is known—andthe strip of yellowgrass points it out—themole can be caught atany time. A trap is setinside the to pass througheither to get out or tocome in, the mole cannot fail to be taken sooner orlater. That is plain enough, said Louis. I see nowhow easy it would be to catch moles again wheneveryou want to after they have been let loose in agarden to rid it of insects. To conclude my account of insectivorous ani-mals, Uncle Paul went on, I will now tell youabout the very smallest of mammals, a tiny creaturenot more than two inches long. This cunning littleanimal looks somewhat like a mouse, but is muchsmaller. The tail is shorter, the head more tapering,and the nose ends in a sharper point. The ears are. Jaws and Teeth of a Shrew-mouse THE MOLES NEST—THE SHREW-MOUSE 81 short and rounded. But the coat is almost the sameas that of the mouse. The shrew-mouse has the same tastes as themole: it is an ardent hunter of small game, a de-vourer of larvae and insects, as you can see by itsfinely serrate teeth. Its slender body, made forsqueezing into the smallest hole, and its long snout,shaped for prying into the narrowest crannies andcrevices, enable it to go wherever vermin may belurking. Woe to the wood-louse rolled up like a tinypellet in some crack in the wall, and to the slug hidingunder a stone! The shrew-mouse will have no dif-ficulty in catching them, being so small that it couldmake its home in a nutshell. It will not help themto hide, for the shrew-mouse does not need to seethem in order to find them. It detects them by itssubtle sense of smell, and hears them if they makethe slightest movement. The burrows of the beetles,the warrens of the larva
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