British Wild Beasts, 193 



coat," and to be accepted with as much reserve as the moles 

 of Holy Writ, which, owing to errors of translation, should 

 sometimes be read " Swan ! " The intelligent, however, 

 will do well to regard the mole as a curious little beast, 

 created apparently for the purpose of providing the earth 

 with an invaluable system of sub-soil drainage, and, sub- 

 ordinately, as a moral discipline for landscape gardeners — 

 and (in Hurdis) for shepherds — 



" Scarce disappears the deluge, when the mole, 

 Close prisoner long in subterranean cell 

 Frost-bound, again the miner plays, and heaves, 

 With treble industry, the mellow mound 

 Along the swarded vale. The shepherd's eye 

 With unforgiving enmity surveys 

 'The long concatenated sweep of hills, 

 Whose soft and crumbling soil abridges more 

 The scanty pittance of his hungry fold." 



Cowper, with a wail of sympathy that is almost charac- 

 teristic of him,- finds in the little harmless beast a sinister 

 analogy — 



" We mount again, and feel at every step 

 One foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft. 

 Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil. 

 He, not unlike the great ones of mankind, 

 Disfigures earth, and plotting in the dark, 

 Toils m.uch to earn a monumental pile 

 That may record the mischief he has done." 



Nor is it without interest as being the chief possessor of all 

 the world below the surface. 



" What need of all this marble crust 

 To impack the wanton mole of dust, 

 That thinks by breadth the world t' unite 

 Though the first builders failed in height." — Marvell. 



In some places the rat usurps its patrimony, but the 



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