/82 NATURAL THEOLOG-Y. 



going down to the end of it. The plush covering which, by 

 tJie smoothness, closeness, and pohsh of the short piles that 

 compose it, rejects the adhesion of almost every species of 

 earth, defends the animal from cold and wet, and from the 

 impediment which it would experience by the mould stick- 

 ing to its body. From soils of all kinds* the little pioneer 

 comes forth bright and clean. Inhabiting dirt, it is of all 

 animals the neatest. 



But what I have always most admired in the mole is its 

 eyes. This animal occasionally visiting the surface, and 

 wanting, for its safety and direction, to be informed when it 

 does so, or when it approaches it, a perception of light was 

 necessary. I do not know that the clearness of sight depends 

 at all upon the size of the organ. What is gained by the 

 largeness or prominence of the globe of the eye, is width in 

 the field of vision. Such a capacity would be of no use to 

 an animal which was to seek its food in the dark. The 

 mole did not want to look about it ; nor would a large ad- 

 vanced eye have been easily defended from the annoyance 

 to which the life of the animal must constantly expose it. 

 How indeed was the mole, working its way under ground, 

 to guard its eyes at all ? In order to meet this difficulty, 

 the eyes are made scarcely larger than the head of a cork- 

 ing-pin ; and these mmute globules are sunk so deeply in the 

 skull, and lie so sheltered within the velvet of its covering, 

 as that any contraction of what may be called the eye- 

 brows, not only closes up the apertures which lead to the 

 eyes, but presents a cushion, as it were, to any sharp or pro- 

 truding substance which might push against them. This 

 aperture, even in its ordinary state, is like a pin-hole in a 

 piece of velvet, scarcely pervious to loose particles of earth. 



Observe, then, in tliis structure, that which we call rela- 

 tion. There is no natural connection between a small sunk 

 eye and a shovel palmated foot. Palmated feet might have 

 been joined with goggle eyes; or small eyes might have 

 been joined with feet of any other form What was it, 



