138 
PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY, 
mole, and the Creator has expended more mechanical genius in 
the construction only of the hand of the mole, than upon the skel- 
etons of all the giants of the earth and of the waters. 
The Bengal tiger is a lizard for sobriety, and a lamb for mild- 
ness, compared with the mole, for the Bengal tiger has never 
turned his canines against his own blood. Send two tigers in one 
box to a friend ; they will reach their destination without colli- 
sion : place two moles in the same position, one will have swal- 
lowed the other before arriving at the end of the first stage. 
What great difficulty, indeed, in moving like the elephant, 
through a medium so little resisting as the air; or, like the whale, 
through a fluid medium where you can rise or descend at pleasure 
by the compression or dilatation of your lungs! But place an 
elephant or a whale fifty feet below the earth, in the same cir- 
cumstances as the unfortunate Dufavel, and see to what will 
amount the most desperate efforts of the cetaceous animal, or the 
proboscidian. Alas, both will perish in their anguish, in a very 
short time, for want of picks to stir the earth, and of muscles vig- 
orous enough to move them. Give to the mole the bulk of the 
whale, or even of the elephant, and it will upturn every thing be- 
fore it. 
It is equally obvious that the animal destined to live in such a 
sphere as the turf, should be armed with means of locomotion 
more powerful than that which is destined to move in the atmos- 
pheric or aquatic medium, whose molecules are displaced by the 
least opposition. The muscular superiority of the mole over the 
elephant is one of those truths which announce themselves, and 
require no discussion. The jaw-bone of the mole is armed with 
FORTY-FOUR redoubtable teeth. His snout — index of an out- 
rageous sensuality — has taken proportions so enormous that it has 
almost completely obstructed the sense of sight (sense of charity). 
The mole moves its head, and the pulverized soil suddenly jets 
up in the air, as the bitter water is flung from the fins of the 
cachalot. His stomach is a furnace, always ardent, where the 
most indigestible aliments instantly twist up, melt, and disappear. 
Its hunger is mania ; its love an epilepsy. 
The existence of the mole is a continual orgie of blood. Its 
