Abstract
MOLES must have an opportunity of getting to the surface here and there to dispose of the results of their excavations. When they meet with a deep-laid hard road they come out and cross it. When frost has bound the soil into an impenetrable cake they sometimes come out of the ground, and, travelling away to seek a place more suitable for their operations, are unable to find their way back or to burrow into the frozen soil in another place, and so they get killed in considerable numbers. When there is a little snow on the ground, protecting it from the frost, the moles come to the surface as usual, and throw up mounds of earth under or through the snow. But, when deep-drifted snow has covered the ground, the mole-hills under it are found to be arranged in more or less symmetrical ridges of uniform height and breadth, as represented in the sketch. It would appear that the moles in these circumstances make galleries about the size of their own bodies on the surface of the turf in the bottom of the snow, into which they push the earth to be disposed of, finding it easier to make these small tunnels than to raise the usual mound of earth under the superincumbent snow-drift. The severe winter just over has caused the snow-drifts to lie long in the north of England, where examples of this peculiar form of mole-hill may be commonly seen on the Fells.
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HUGHES, T. On the Form of Mole-Hills Thrown up under Snow. Nature 34, 3 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034003a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034003a0
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