ii2 COLIN CLOUTS CALENDAR. 



paws or shape was less adapted to burrowing, and pre- 

 serving those which best fulfilled the new conditions 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 

 adapted to its own special varieties of soil and earth- 

 worms. 



Our own English mole has now acquired a shape 

 and structure admirably fitted to his station in life. He 

 has immensely powerful muscles, which enable him to 

 plough through the soil with astonishing rapidity, as 

 anybody knows who has once seen the earth heaving 

 and swelling beneath the turf where he is at work 

 constructing a new tunnel. In order to make up for 

 this immense expenditure of energy, he requires a pro- 

 portionately enormous quantity of food ; his appetite is 

 positively ravenous, and he starves if forced to fast for 

 only half a day, except during his brief period of hiber- 

 nation. As a rule, he works for three hours at a time, 

 then rests three hours, then works again, and so on 

 perpetually. His fur is very thick and close, so as to 

 prevent dust from getting at the skin ; and it is extremely 

 soft, so as not to rub against the burrows and cause 

 vibrations in the earth, which, as Mr. Danvin has shown, 

 frighten away the timid worms. His slender snout both 

 forms a wedge to loosen the soil and enables him the 

 better to pick his clinging prey from its narrow concreted 

 tunnel. On the other hand, an eye is almost useless to 



