THE WONDER OF LIFE 519 



gentleman in the velvet coat ', who long ago discovered 

 the possibility of a subterranean hfe for a warm-blooded 

 animal, and disturbed the earthworms in the retreats 

 where they had for so long enjoyed relative immunity. 

 What a bundle of adaptations the creature is ! The out- 

 turned hand has become a powerful shovel, aided by the 

 presence of an extra bone, the sickle, to the inner side^of the 

 thumb ; the shoulder-girdle is very strong and the pectoral 

 muscles are those of an athlete ; the long muscular sensitive 

 snout, which probes the way, is strengthened by a special 

 bone near the tip ; the hind legs remain purely locomotor ; 

 the absence of the external trumpet of the ear is an adapta- 

 tion to the reduction of friction ; the minute eyes are well 

 hidden among the hair and thus saved from being rubbed ; 

 and there must be some special advantage too in the way 

 the hairs stand out vertically hke the pile on velvet. The 

 eye is not well finished, as an instrument-maker might 

 say — the lens in particular being rather half-made and the 

 optic nerve far from well developed — ^but as the mole is 

 well aware of the difference between light and darkness, 

 and can bite quite deftly at a dangled worm, its eyesight 

 is probably just as good as it needs to be. 



Its habits, too, how adaptive they are — ^the quick himt- 

 ing close to the siirface, the slow deep burrowing below the 

 reach of the frost's fingers in winter, the nest-making below 

 the chief mole-hill or fortress, the making of a special 

 tunnel to the nearest water, and so on. Dr. Ritzema-Bos 

 has verified the observation that moles make a store of 

 earthworms for the winter months, biting their heads 

 off so that they He inert but not dead. If this were done 

 in the summer months the head would be regrown 

 and the captives would crawl away, but below a certain 



