i io COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



one of the best examples of the kind of wild animals 

 that still manage to drag out a miserable existence in 

 English meadows or pastures. The mole is in structure 

 an insectivore, one of that great central mammalian 

 order which best keeps up for us to the present day the 

 primitive peculiarities of the whole class of mammals. 

 They have all small brains, and very little developed 

 limbs or organs. They are the least specialised of all 

 quadrupeds, the kinds which have diverged the least 

 from the first ancestral rough sketch of the mammalian 

 type. Compared with a horse, a deer, an elephant, or a 

 cat, one feels at once that moles, hedgehogs, and shrews 

 are very simple and undeveloped forms. Even externally 

 they have not the formed limbs and highly modified 

 weapons or extremities of these higher animals ; instead 

 of a solid hoof they have five rude simple claws ; instead 

 of powerful tearing teeth they have a weak and primitive 

 dentition ; while of course they have no such peculiar 

 appendages as horns, antlers, tusks, a trunk, an opposable 

 thumb, or a prehensile tail. 



This simplicity and central character in their outer 

 shape is answered by an equal simplicity in anatomical 

 characters. They are, in fact, a few skulking representa- 

 tives of a very early type, which do not come into 

 competition with the higher and later forms because of 

 their nocturnal or underground habits, and so survive 

 comparatively unchanged ; while all the better places in 

 the hierarchy of nature are filled by more advanced and 

 specially adapted creatures. 



On the other hand, if you look closely at this mole, 

 you will see that while in general type it has varied but 

 little from the primitive mammalian ancestor, it has yet 



