COMMON MOLE. 5 17 
and female, that they seem to dread or disrelish 
all other society. ''They enjoy (says he) the 
placid habits of repose and solitude ; the art of se- 
curing themselves from disquiet and injury; and 
of instantaneously forming an asylum, or habita- 
tion, of extending its dimensions, and of finding 
a plentiful subsistence without the necessity of 
going abroad. These are the manners and dispo- 
sitions of the Mole ; and they are unquestionably 
preferable to talents more brilliant, and more in- 
compatible with happiness than the most profound 
obscurity." 
The Mole is furnished with eyes so extremely 
small that it has been doubted whether they were 
intended by Nature for distinct vision, or rather 
' merely for giving the creature such a degree of 
notice of the approach of light as might suffici- 
ently warn it of the danger of exposure. Galen, 
however, seems to have been of a different opi- 
nion, since he ventures to affirm that the eyes of 
the Mole are furnished with the crystalline and 
vitreous humours, encompassed with their respec- 
tive tunics; so accurate an anatomist was that 
great man, even unassisted by glasses. The learn- 
ed Sir Thomas Brown, in his Pseudodoxia Epide- 
mica, or Vulgar Errors, affirms that this observa- 
tion of Galen transcendeth his discovery;" for 
that separating these little orbs, and including 
them in magnifying glasses, he could discern no 
more than what Aristotle mentions, viz. a black 
humour. Mr. Derham, however, in his Physico- 
Theology, declares, that he has made divers 
