LOVES AND DUELS OF THE MOLE. 141 
after having put all his rivals to death, who after having killed 
them devours them, and all gormed with blood, all smoking with 
carnage, claims of beauty the prize of his exploits ! For those 
long subterranean galleries which you have sometimes followed 
with your eye along the soil, are not always galleries dug by the 
mole in search of the larvae and the earthworms on which it feeds. 
It is often the issue pierced by the female to escape from the for- 
midable embrace of her persecutors. Love speaks loud to the 
sensuality of this species, and every female is the aim of the pre- 
tensions of a crowd of aspirants. The unfortunate has but a lit- 
tle respite in the desperate duels of its immolators with each 
other ; she seeks to profit by the conflict to attempt an escape. 
This answers well for one day, and while the butchery continues. 
But the struggle once over and conqueror declared, he, after sa- 
tiating his vengeance, devotes himself to catching the fugitive 
again. Then it is a siege, by all the rules in which all the com- 
binations of mining strategy are displayed. Mines and counter 
mines,, circular chambers with double issues, diagonal cuts, cor- 
montaigne stratagems and others. The resistance must come to 
an end when the male has succeeded in driving the female to the 
wall in some shut passage. Then her only chance is to gain the 
surface instantly ; but the daylight dazzles her, her exhaustion be- 
trays her chastity, and the painful sacrifice is accomplished. The 
mother .then to secure the safety of her family will exert all 
the talent which the virgin has displayed in the defense of her 
virtue. 
Such galleries of love have been seen three quarters of a mile in 
length ; the dimension of those of the chase are no less. The 
gallery of the chase is the road by which the mole repairs from its 
domicile to its hunting-grounds. The art of the mole-catcher, orig- 
inated in France by the celebrated Henry Lecomt, is based entirely 
upon the knowledge of this passage. As the mole is obliged by 
the exigences of its voracity to make this journey several times a 
day, and especially morning and evening, it is very easy to extend 
a snare for it when its route is known. 
The art of the mole- catcher has made great progress within a 
few years. Lecomt has measured the swiftness with which the 
