UNDERGROUND RESIDENCES. 21 



If the country in which the earth-dweller is placed should not 

 be of a rocky or stony character, affording no caverns already 

 excavated by the hand of nature, the savage is obliged to do vio- 

 lence to his temperament, and to set to work. Furnished as he 

 is with the most miserable of tools — his usual implement, a stick 

 with a sharpened end charred in the fire to make it harder — he 

 can make but little progress, humble though the task may be. 

 The sandy nature of the soil in which he is generally placed of- 

 fers but little resistance to the rude tool with which he labors, 

 and as the savage is content with a mere apology for a dwelling- 

 place, his task is soon accomplished. If he desires to be pecul- 

 iarly comfortable, he may stick a few dried bushes on the wind- 

 ward side of the hole, and hang a skin on them ; but it is only 

 on very wet and windy days that he will take so much trouble. 



All subterranean dwellings are not of this simple nature. The 

 underground palaces of India are wonderful examples of work- 

 manship ; but then they are nothing more or less than buildings 

 placed below the level of the ground, and inhabited in the hot 

 season by the luxurious. Even in such cases, however, the in- 

 herent defects of an underground dwelling make themselves 

 painfully apparent. The rooms, though cool, are close and de- 

 pressing in the extreme. Ventilation can not be properly ac- 

 complished — the coolness is but the damp chilliness of a cellar, 

 and brings no invigorating freshness to the languid frame, so 

 that the edifice is only inhabited occasionally for the sake of 

 grandeur, and the owner gladly retreats to the upper air, where 

 he seeks the needed coolness by means of fans and evaporating 

 water. 



Human habitations, however, do not come within the scope of 

 the present work, which is restricted to those homes that are con- 

 structed without the aid of hands, and are planned, not by rea- 

 son, but by instinct. We pass, therefore, from the handiwork of 

 man to those dwellings which are constructed with feet, or jaws, 

 or beaks, and which are never marred by incompetence or im- 

 proved by practice. 



Of all the mammalia, the Mole is entitled to take the first 

 place in our list of burrowers. 



This extraordinary animal does not merely dig tunnels in the 

 ground and sit at the end of them, but forms a complicated sub- 

 terranean dwelling-place, with chambers, passages, and other ar- 



