142 PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
mole moves in its subterranean galleries. He stuck along the 
whole length of an inhabited gallery a certain number of straws 
adorned with little flags at their tops, and hermetically closed the 
orifice of the passage with the big end of a bugle horn. Then 
when he saw by the fluttering of the little flags that the enemy 
was near, he drew from his instrument a terrible note, which pro- 
duced such an impression on the animal that suddenly all the lit- 
tle flags along the line were seen, at once reversed. It was proved 
by this curious experiment repeated several times, that the great- 
est swiftness of the mole in its gallery was equal to that of a horse 
in full trot. Those who desire to know more about the mole may 
consult the writings of M. Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, the greatest sci- 
entific and zoological genius of this age— the only learned man 
who has known the Series. 
Many estimable analogists, to whose opinion I should be happy 
to concede small points, do not entirely partake my manner of con- 
sidering the mole. They are not convinced that Virgil alluded to 
this animal as the 
‘‘ Monstrum horrendum, informe ingens, 
Cui lumen ademptum 
They say that this hump-backed, big-bellied, gluttonous quadru- 
ped is an emblem of the road-contractor. They find a marked re- 
semblance between the moles which upturn the soil and pierce 
passages of subterranean communications to pursue and catch 
everywhere the insects which they feed on; and the monopo- 
lizers of rail -roads and of stage-routes, who devour each other 
— who disturb the commercial relations of a country, and pos- 
sess themselves of all the means of transportation in order 
to fleece travelers, their victims, without mercy — who make use 
of their railways as electric telegraphs, and ruin by their stock- 
jobbing manoeuvres the farmer, the true laborer, and the state. 
These analogists add that the extreme nervous sensibility of the 
mole, which fears the light and is killed by the least scorching, 
characterizes the obstinate obscurantism of those monopolizers of 
banking and of transportation — who also fear the light because 
they know perfectly well that the first industrial reform will kill 
them by killing the anarchy in which industry now struggles. I 
