THE STAR-NOSED MOLE.[275]
Besides the Eastern forms to which we have just referred, there are a few American species of this family, which differ rather more decidedly from the ordinary Moles. Perhaps the most remarkable of them is the Star-nosed Mole, an inhabitant of Canada and the United States, extending from South Carolina to Hudson’s Bay, and stretching right across the continent, from ocean to ocean.
The most striking characteristic of this animal, which constitutes the genus Condylura, is the presence at the extremity of its elongated nose of a sort of fringe of about twenty long fleshy processes, forming a regular star, having the nostrils towards its centre. The names Rhinaster and Astromycter, both meaning “Star-nose,” have been given to the genus by different writers. The name Condylura is founded on a mistake, the tail having been supposed to have a knob or knot. The tail is nearly as long as the body, the general appearance of which is mole-like, but the shoulders are stouter and heavier in proportion to the hind-quarters than in our Common Mole, although the digging hands are hardly so powerful. The last phalanges of the fingers are not cleft, as in the Mole. The skull is elongated, and the jaws contain in all forty-four teeth—namely, besides canines, three incisors, four premolars, and three true molars on each side in each jaw. The arrangement of the teeth in the long jaws is rather peculiar. In the upper jaw the two middle and the two outer incisors are of large size, and the latter are quite like canines; between them is a third minute tooth on each side. The true canine is very small; the first three premolars are thin and sharp, and the fourth much larger than the rest. In the lower jaw we find four projecting incisors, and behind the outer ones on each side a much smaller one, followed at an interval by a small canine with two roots. The eyes are very minute, and there are no external ears.
SIDE VIEW OF SNOUT OF
STAR-NOSED MOLE.
FRONT VIEW OF SNOUT
OF STAR-NOSED MOLE.
This curious little animal, which measures about five inches in length, and has a tail about three inches long, is of a brownish-black colour, a little paler beneath, but appearing in certain lights perfectly black throughout. The naked, or nearly naked parts, such as the nose, with its singular appendages, and the feet, are generally of a flesh-colour, the tips of the fringes and of the claws being, in fact, quite rosy. The tail is well covered with hair.
The Star-nosed Mole, like the other members of its family, lives beneath the surface of the ground, where it is able to burrow rapidly in soft earth. It prefers the vicinity of brooks or swampy places. The galleries do not run so near the surface as those of the Common Shrew Mole of America. The nest is composed of dried grass, and placed in an excavation made under some protective object, such as a stump or the root of a tree. The young show scarcely any trace of the nasal appendages. The precise use of these curious organs in the adult does not seem to be ascertained; probably they aid as sensory organs in the discovery of the worms and larvæ of insects on which the creature feeds.