22 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



etc., though these underground creatures are able to 

 burrow their way through the soil with greater ra- 

 pidity than may be imagined. Indeed, so swift is the 

 progress through the soil of some species of the mole 

 family, that, .placed upon the ground, they sink into 

 it as if it were quicksand, and make such rapid prog- 

 ress that the most expert spadesman can not catch 

 them. 



There are, indeed, many animals that dig lairs and 

 dens and nests underground in which they rest and 

 bring up their little ones ; but the mole, although he 

 has the most curiously planned and carefully con- 

 structed subterranean dwelling place of them all, does 

 not confine himself to it, but goes rambling off in any 

 direction he chooses through the solid earth, almost 

 as a fish swims in water. Perhaps he sets out to call 

 upon a friend, or to hunt for the earthworms that are 

 his staff of life, but, at any rate, by the exercise of 

 some sense or faculty of which we human creatures 

 know nothing, he finds less difficulty in making his 

 way to any given locality and back again to his home 

 than we sometimes do mth the aid of our eves and 

 broad daylight to help us. 



Have you ever watched laborers digging a cellar — 

 how hard they have to work to make any appreciable 

 progress ? Let us do a Httle sum in simple propor- 

 tion — single rule of three it used to be called in the 

 country school I attended. A mole is to a man as 

 a molehill is to the work a mole could do if he were 

 as big as a man ; or, mole : man : : molehill . ; and the 

 answer is a space excavated, measuring about twelve 



