THE MOLE. 23 



by twenty feet. In other words, if we had tame 

 moles of the average bulk and stature of human 

 beings, we could set one to work and he would dig a 

 cellar for us twelve feet deep and twenty feet square 

 in the time it takes a mole to make his hill. But 1 

 doubt if it would pay very well to keep him, even 

 though he might do more work than a patent steam 

 excavator. Of cotirse, we could not expect to feed 

 him on grubs and worms, which are his natural ali- 

 ment in his present diminutive proportions. We 

 would have to substitute boa constrictors twenty feet 

 long, and, so fearful is his voracity, he would require 

 at least twenty-five or more of these huge serpents 

 every day. But as he is perhaps the very fiercest as 

 well as the most ravenous of mammals, it would with- 

 out doubt be impossible to tame him at all. With a 

 few blows of his enormously powerful claws he could 

 tear an elephant in pieces, and his insatiable lust of 

 slaughter would lead him to kill every living thing he 

 encountered. A mole like the lad in the fairy tale, 

 who could not learn to shiver and shake, does not in 

 the least know what fear is, and in his combats with 

 other moles shows a fury and fiery energy that nothing 

 can surpass. 



