46 Anecdotal Natural History. 



They are large and powerful, not covered with fur 

 like the rest of the body, and are furnished with 

 long, curved, and rather flattened claws, which can 

 penetrate the hardest earth. 



These paws occasionally fulfil other offices than 

 those of digging, for the mole is by no means a bad 

 swimmer, and is often known to cross brooks and 

 small streams, using the paws as paddles. 



It is scarcely possible to select two creatures which 

 present stronger contrasts to each other in point of 

 structure than the moles and the bats, both in- 

 sectivorous, but the one formed for flying in the air, 

 and the other for burrowing in the ground. 



In both animals the hind-limbs are but little 

 required, and therefore they are feeble and compara- 

 tively insignificant, the chief distinction being in the 

 development of the fore-limbs. 



Beginning with the shoulder-blade, or ' scapula,' 

 we find it large in both animals, but differently 

 developed, in the bats being wide, thin, and covering 

 many of the ribs, reaching as far as the pelvis. 



In the mole, the scapula is long, narrow, very 

 strong, and projecting upwards so as to affcrd 

 attachment for the powerful muscles of the arm. 

 The other bones are shortened and thickened in 

 order to carry the enormous digging claws, and are 

 deeply ridged for the attachment of the tendons which 

 work the joints. In the bats they are attenuated to 

 the last degree, and only one of them is capable of 

 bearing a slight, hooked claw, solely employed lor 

 dragging itselt clumsily over a level surface. 



Yet the bones are the same in each case, and 

 when the creature is dissected, the exquisitely perfect 

 adaptation of each bone to its own office cannot but 

 excite our highest wonder and admiration. 



In the accompanying illustration the skeleton o{ 



