Notes and Comments 
which at once pro- 
claim that it belongs 
to the rodent, or 
gnawing, order. The 
creature 1s in fact a 
rodent mole, fully 
double the size of the 
truemole. With that 
animal it agrees in 
the rudimentary con- 
dition of the eyes, 
which are reduced to 
mere specks covered 
with a film of skin, 
as 1b also does in the 
reduction of the ears 
to mere tubercles, 
and likewise by the 
fur bending readily in either direction instead 
of sloping backwards as in ordinary mammals. 
The feet and claws are, however, of a totally 
different type, being very similar to those 
of many other burrowing rodents. In 
colour the soft and thick fur is yellowish 
brown, with a strong tinge of ashy grey 
on the head and back. 
Formerly there was supposed to be but 
a single species of mole-rat, with a range 
extending from South - Hastern Hurope 
through Mesopotamia, Persia, and Syria to 
Egypt, but it is now ascertained that there 
are several distinct forms. 
Inke the ordimary mole, the mole-rat 
constructs subterranean tunnels, the course 
of which is marked above ground by the 
well-known heaps of earth thrown up at 
intervals by the industrious excavator. In- 
stead, however, of burrowing in search of 
earth-worms, the mole-rat drives its tunnels 
for the purpose of obtaining the bulbs and 
succulent roots which form its food. Great 
stores of these bulbs are, indeed, accumulated 
by these rodents, at all events in Egypt, in 
chambers specially constructed for their recep- 
tion ; the chambers being generally placed 
at a considerable distance below the surface. 
Several other members of the same family 
of rodents have taken to a subterranean 
Photo by A. S. Rudiand,} 
A PAIR OF MOLE-RATS. 
[Edgware koad, W. 
mode of existence; the largest being the 
strand-mole (Bathyergus maritinus) of Cape 
Colony, which measures nearly a foot in 
length, and is chocolate-brown in colour. 
Another Cape species (Georychus capensis), 
in addition to its inferior size, differs by the 
front teeth being smooth, instead of grooved, 
on their exposed surface. Stranger than 
all are the hideous naked sand-rats (Hetevo- 
cephalus), which are about the size of a 
long-tailed field-mouse, and have bare, warty 
skins of most repulsive appearance. They 
construct shallow tunnels in the burning 
sand of Somaliland and other parts of North- 
Hast Africa. 
Whether all the foregomg burrowers 
are descended from a common ancestor 
which had taken to a subterranean life, or 
whether they have acquired their tunnelling 
habits independently, may be an open 
question. It is, however, certain that this 
mode of existence has been adopted by 
ditferent kinds of rodents mdependently of 
one another. For instance, there are the 
nearly blind zokors, or mole-voles (Hllobius 
and Stiphneus) of Hastern Hurope and Central 
and Northern Asia, which, as their second 
name implies, are near relatives of the voles, 
as exemplified by the water-rat and short- 
tailed field-mice. 
