For moles' skins the keeper has no sentiment. He will not part with his
skins of rare birds--but will willingly barter the prospect of wearing
a moles' skin waistcoat for the price of an ounce of shag a skin. By
catching moles he pleases the farmers, who know no more than he himself
about any good work that moles do: he frees his rides from unsightly
heaps and raised tunnellings; and now and then his mole-traps catch
a weasel. Many keepers make a fair sum of money each year by selling
moles' skins; furriers will as readily give twopence for a skin as
others threepence or sixpence. The skins, cut close round the head,
are drawn from the moles' bodies as a man draws stockings from his
legs; they are pegged out, fur downwards, on a board, to be dried and
powdered with alum, then are stuffed with meadow hay, and packed by
scores or hundreds. Perhaps no fur is quite so soft and beautiful as
the mole's; and the keeper is always well pleased to note how well the
pelts of his enemies become women-folk's faces.
* * * * *