108 COLIN CLOUT 'S CALENDAR. 



outward, for shovelling out the earth from his tunnels ; 

 they look singularly like the human hand, and are wholly 

 different from the webbed fingers of the oared shrew, or 

 the simple flat feet of the hedgehog. Ages and ages 

 ago the ancestors of the mole took to burrowing in the 

 ground for a livelihood, and all their structure has long 

 since been accommodated by use and wont or by natural 

 selection to their peculiar habits. It is easy enough to 

 see, indeed, how a burrowing insectivore might readily 

 acquire the special mode of life now so deeply ingrained 

 in the race of moles. At first, no doubt, it would take 

 to digging a hole in the earth simply for protection, like 

 rabbits and mice ; but, as it must thus necessarily come 

 across the long tunnels and nests of Mr. Darwin's friends 

 the earthworms, it would naturally eat these congenial 

 morsels of food, which a herbivore like the rabbit could 

 not touch. A certain number of such original undiffer- 

 entiated ancestors of the mole would be sure to find an 

 easier living by hunting the worms underground than by 

 looking for beetles and slugs on the surface, like the 

 hedgehogs, especially if they happened to be of a pow- 

 erful muscular build. The habit of digging rapidly 

 through the ground would increase their strength from 

 generation to generation ; and natural selection would 

 co-operate with habit by weeding out all those individu- 

 als whose paws or shape was less adapted to burrowing, 

 and preserving those which best fulfilled the new condi- 

 tions of existence. The strongest prototypical mole, 

 with the biggest shovel-shaped forefeet, and the sharpest 

 snout for extracting the worm from his circular tunnel, 

 would obtain the greatest quantity of food, and starve 

 out his less developed competitors. So in time all the 

 existing peculiarities of the species would come to be 

 evolved, till at last each country possessed a mole exactly 



