232 THE UNIVERSE. 



of food for a day it dies of inanition. It is a complete 

 eating machine, gulping down every day a proportionately 

 enormous quantity of food, so that M. de la Blanchere 

 was right in saying, that "if we could magnify the mole 

 to the size of the elephant, we should be face to face with 

 the most terrific brute the world ever brought forth. "^ 



Had the fact not been attested by a savant like E. 

 Geoffroy Saint -Hilaire, no one would believe that the 

 mole, an underground animal j^ar excellence, though 

 buried beneath the soil, nevertheless catches birds in 

 order to devour them. The crafty mammal executes this 

 kind of fowling by moving its muzzle slightly on the sur- 

 face of its mole-hill. The bird thinks it is a little worm 

 stirring, and swoops down to seize it, but finds only the 

 hungry gullet of the earth-digger which engulfs it in an 

 instant. 



The structure of the workman is wonderfully adapted 

 to its kind of life; its fore-limbs present two broad cutting 

 shovels, moved by a muscular apparatus so powerful that 

 it alone weighs almost as much as the rest of the bodv. 

 Its muzzle, a movable snout, first pierces the soil, and 

 its paws clear this away in proportion as it is loosened. 

 Aided by such organs the mole cuts out its underground 

 tunnels with prodigious velocity; it is a living auger, a 

 complete instrument for excavating the earth. 



This animal devours its prey with such gluttony, that 

 when this is of some size, as in the case of a rat or bird 

 for instance, it penetrates in a certain sense into the 

 bowels of it, the head and fore-feet being so thrust in that 



1 In Switzerland M. Webei- experimented upon two moles. Such was their 

 voracity that in nine days they had eaten 341 white-worms, 193 earth-worms, 

 25 caterpillars, and a mouse, both the bones and skin of which they swallowed. 

 When he restricted them to a vegetable diet they died of hunger. Messrs. Duges 

 and Flourens have proved that they perish if kept for a day without food. 



