His broad shovel-like front paws (see [Fig. 56]), with their five strong claws, set each in a long groove at the tip of the last finger-joint, are powerful tools for shovelling away the earth, as he turns them outwards and pushes with them as if he were swimming; and they are carried on strong, short, and broad front legs, fixed to collar-bones and a shoulder blade of unusual strength, while the breastbone is so formed as to throw the legs forward and bring them on a level with his nose when he is burrowing. This nose, too, has its part to play, for it is long and slender, with a small bone at the tip, which helps him in pushing his way forwards while his hind feet are planted flat and firm on the ground behind, while it also serves to pick out the grubs, worms, and beetles from their narrow holes.
Here, then, we have the very best of miners, who has secured food and safety far from the busy world above, and spends his time hunting for grubs and earth-worms in the dark earth below. He is a most voracious animal, and makes the ground above him heave and swell as he toils through it eager for prey, pushing up every now and then with his nose the loose earth he has excavated, thus marking the line of his route by molehills.
But when he builds his home and fortress where he takes his long winter’s sleep, and hides from weasels and pole-cats, he takes care to throw no loose rubbish above; on the contrary, he presses the earth together so as to make the walls of his chamber firm and hard, and carries out from it a number of passages, by any of which he can reach his home in safety when he is pursued too closely.
Thus by his cleverness in burrowing, and the useful tools which he carries upon his body, the mole has managed to find safe feeding-ground and shelter, when no doubt many of his relations living above ground have been killed off. Even underground he has his enemies, for the Weasel, the Stoat, and the Badger find him good eating, while if he meets one of his own brothers in a narrow passage they will fight till one is killed and eaten; yet though fierce he is also tender-hearted, for mole-catchers say that when a mother-mole is caught in a trap the father may sometimes be found dead by her side.
And now if we turn to the rodents for rivals to the mole, we are almost confounded by the multitude of creatures which have found safety in burrowing. Not only have we the rabbit-warrens, by which the sandy soil of our commons is riddled in every direction with holes, leading to burrows where the mother lies snugly hidden with her five or six naked little ones in a bed of her own fur; but we have the extensive burrows of the little, long-legged, leaping, gnawing Jerboas of Africa, which are so like the Jumping Shrews among insect-eaters. Then again there are the underground cities of the South American Viscachas and Chinchillas, and the extensive subterranean settlements of the Lemmings,—those curious rodents, which from time to time start off in vast swarms across Norway, over mountain and valley, through flood and fen, over rivers and plains, preyed upon by eagles and hawks, foxes and weasels, on their way, but never stopping or swerving in their course till they reach the sea, into which they plunge and drown themselves. Again, every inhabitant of Switzerland knows the Marmot and the burrows he forms, scratching up the earth with his hind feet and patting it together with his front paws and his broad nose; while every American child has heard of the hillocks thrown up by the “Prairie Dogs,”[138] which undermine whole plains in the far west with their underground cities, where the burrowing owl shares their home with them, and the rattlesnake steals their young.
Fig. 58.
The Pyrenean Desman,[141] an insect-eating water animal.
But all these come out upon the land and use their burrows chiefly for homes and nurseries. We can match the mole better than this among rodents, for in Eastern Europe, India, and Africa, there are blind creatures called Mole-rats[139] (see [Fig. 57]), with broad flat heads, small eyes hidden in their fur, short tails, and feet with sharp claws, which live almost entirely underground, burrowing subterranean galleries in the sandy plains in search of roots, as the mole does for worms; while the Pouched Rats[140] of North America also live in burrows, throwing up hills just like mole-hills, and gnawing roots and buried seeds, which they carry in their large cheek-pouches, to store up in their underground chamber for winter food.
Nevertheless, the rodents can scarcely compete with the mole as burrowers, and it is not till we come to the water-animals that they begin to have the best of it. True, the insect-eaters have the Water-shrew and the curious West African Shrew,[143] with its broad tail; while the Desman[144] of Russia and the Pyrenees (see [Fig. 58]), with his dense furry coat, his broad tail, and his webbed feet, is quite a match for the gnawing Musk-rat or Musquash of North America, for they both live in fortresses on the river-banks, to which hidden passages are well contrived to elude pursuit; and while the desman, with his curious movable snout, pokes about in the Russian or Pyrenean streams after leeches, water-snails and insects, the musquash in America gnaws off the roots and stems of water-plants.