Chap, vi.] RODENT MOLES. I25 



seasons plenty of the latter ; but just now, only a few were to be 

 found, and they were breeding. I saw two nests. In the 

 thicker bushes are so-called " pheasants " {Francolinus). There 

 are introduced true pheasants about the foot of Table Mountain 

 in considerable numbers, preserved for shooting. 



A large shrike, with a yellowish breast, is the commonest 

 and most conspicuous of the smaller birds ; but the most beau- 

 tiful are the little Nectarinidce or Honey-birds, which here take 

 the place of the Humming-birds of South America, and in their 

 splendid gold and green colouring are almost equal to them. 

 Above Simons Town is a sort of small gorge or chasm in the 

 mountain-side, where there is a waterfall with beautiful ferns 

 growing about it, and where above, on the cliffs, nest hundreds 

 of swallows. I used as a boy to wonder how chimney swallows 

 and house martins managed to nest before there were any 

 houses. 



The sandy flats and fields about the sea-shore are covered 

 with mole-hills, and bored in all directions with tunnels, large 

 enough to admit the hand and arm easily, by the huge Sand- 

 mole {Bathyergus suilus). Bathyergus is a Rodent, with an 

 excessively long pair of projecting lower gnawing teeth. It is 

 a foot long, and covered with a light grey-brown silky fur. 



There is another similar Rodent mole of about half the size 

 {Georychus capensis), which rather affects higher land, but 

 occurs also sometimes with Bathyergus. 



The two together are in such abundance as to cover the 

 country in all directions with mole-hills, and in galloping over 

 the sand one is very apt to be thrown headlong by one of their 

 galleries giving way under the horse's feet. I had two such falls 

 in one day. A clever horse, brought up in the country, learns, 

 however, whilst turned out on the run, to lift his foot out of a 

 hole without stumbling. 



It is the custom to call the moles, such as we have in Europe, 

 the true moles, and to regard these Rodent moles as animals 

 which in some extraordinary way have adopted habits not 

 proper to Rodents, but natural and what is to be expected in a 

 certain group of Insectivora. But in reality, there seems to be 

 no reason why the one set should be the true moles rather 

 than the other, excepting merely as a matter of home nomencla- 

 ture and prejudice. The South American Rodent mole, the 

 ^^ tucutuco" i^Ctenoinys)^ is familiar as described by Darwin in 

 his Journal. And besides this, there are all the Spalacini, or 

 Blind-moles, of which there are nine genera, including Bath- 

 yergus and Georychus, forming steps towards the ground squirrels, 

 Geoniys. 



Of the true moles, or Insectivora, with the habits and outward 



