SANGUINARY MANIA OF THE MOLE. 139 
attacks of bellymania seize it five or six times a day. It dies of 
inanition by ten hours of abstinence. The mole darts on its prey 
with a prodigious bound, seizes it under the belly, plunges the long 
snout in its bowels, enlarges the wound with its claws, to immerse 
itself completely in the blood of its victim, to enjoy through all 
its pores. Each of its murders is the occasion of a voluptuous 
ecstasy. A hungry mole leaped one day at the throat of a young 
girl, and pierced her breast before any one had time to run to her 
assistance. 
M. De Buffoii has made a seductive painting of the pastoral 
manners of the mole, and has envied its happiness. If the an- 
cients had known the mole, it is more than probable that they 
would have consecrated it to Priapus, god of gardens. The mole 
does not belie the common saying, that love is blind. In relation 
to blind love, there is here something very unpleasant to tell man, 
and besides excessively indelicate to be said in plain language. 
I now for the first time recognize that I have been wrong in cursing 
the tenderness of those who condemned my childhood to forced la- 
bors of Latin, instead of allowing it to develop itself freely in the 
open air of vagabondage and sweet-scented hay-ricks, so favorable 
to gymnastic exercise and to the disclosure of the ankles of young 
ladies. Yes, I sincerely regret the loss of my old Cornelius Ne'pos 
(on whom I once won a prize), to draw me out of my present ex- 
planation. I wish to say, that if it is true, as science admits, that 
the special attribution of a single function to an organ be the 
character which constitutes the degree of relative superiority of 
beings in the animal scale, man must place himself on this scale 
at an inferior degree to that which the mole occupies ; seeing that 
in man there are still organs which serve two functions .... in 
the mole never. I beg not to explain myself more clearly on this 
chapter, and also to pass in silence the rending examination of 
that desperate resistance which the virtue of the young mole op- 
poses to the brutal solicitations of its lovers. 
M. Flourens, the immortal, the same to whom his interesting 
studies on the coloring of the duck’s bones has opened the doors 
of the French Academy, has made curious observations on the 
history of the mole. 
