676 TIiA^'SACTJOKS of the Americajsi Institute. 



their baljits. The mole lives, moves, and finds its food beneath the 

 surface of the ground, and like all other of God's creations, is admi- 

 rably adapted to its mode of existence. On one point relating to the 

 structure 'of tlie mole, naturalists express some doubt, and that is 

 ■whether the mole is endowed with the faculty of vision. Goldsmith, 

 in his "Animated ISTature," asserts that the mole has eyes, though of 

 a microscopic smallness. In this, as in some other instances, Gold- 

 smith drew largely on his imagination, as he did in the assertion 

 " that the mole can dig its way so rapidly through the ground that a 

 man with a spade cannot overtake it." This is not only untrue but 

 ridiculous, if it be meant that the mole can go at that rate through 

 new ground; for the speaker had watched them repeatedly in his gar- 

 den and never saw one make its way at a faster rate than about a foot 

 a minute. Reasoning from its mode of life, it is to be said that the 

 mole has no ej^es, and, besides, examination of the head, after care- 

 fully removing the hair, showed no signs of eyes ; but though 

 without eyesight, it is compensated for tlie defect by possessing an 

 equivalent sense not bestowed on seeing animals. It knows the 

 direction of a fence, or house, or barn, or tree, very accurately, and 

 will make its way to them with great precision when it is about 

 retiring to winter quarters. "What this compensatory sense is, it 

 would be vain to conjecture. It prefers the garden or plowed 

 ground, for there it can work or travel with the greater ease, and 

 there it finds its food in the greatest abundance. In the garden its 

 course is erratic, but in the corn field it goes, with unerring pre- 

 cision, from hill to hill along the corn row, particularly it" the corn 

 has been manured in the hill with stable manure. It operates 

 almost uniformly at certain hours of the day, viz., about six o'clock 

 in the morning, at near midday, and at six o'clock in the afternoon. 

 It keeps the same home and pursues the same track for years in suc- 

 cession, and it may be for life. During winter, it remains in its 

 burrow inactive ; whether in a torpid state or not, remains to be 

 ascertained. It is unsociable in disposition, and its intercourse with 

 its kind does not seem to extend beyond the circle of its own house- 

 hold. Each mole, or pair of them, appear to keep very strictly to 

 tlieir own feeding-ground, and will not tolerate any intrusion thereon 

 l)y another. It knoM'S the location of objects which it has never 

 Been ; the direction of a fence without touching it, and when passing 

 a right angle in the line of the fence, will do so by describing an 

 exact scDii-circle instead of making a square turn or right angle. 



