the mole; a genus of quadrupeds belonging to the order of feræ and clas of mammalia. It has fix unequal foreteeth in the upper jaw, and eight in the lower; one tusk on each side in each jaw; seven grinders on each side above, and fix below. There are seven species; the European, the flavo or American, the criftata, longicaudata, fusca, rubra, and aurea.

The European mole is the only species of this animal found in Britain. There are several varieties of it; the black, the variegated, the white, and the grey mole. This species inhabits the whole of Europe except Ireland, where it is said no moles are found. It is also common in the northerly parts of Asia and Africa. It chiefly frequents moist fields that are exposed to the sun, meadows, and gardens; through these it constructs subterraneous roads or galleries in every direction in search of worms, on which and the larvae of insects it feeds, and not at all on vegetables, though it does great damage by loosening the roots of plants. It is most active in its operations before rain, because then the worms are in motion. The penis of the male is exceedingly long in proportion; they seem to pair and propagate in spring; the female bringing four or five young at a birth, which are placed in nests made of moss, leaves, and dried grass, under the largest hillocks of the field; these are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, consisting of an interior hillock, surrounded with a ditch, which communicates with several galleries, on purpose to carry off the moisture; and the nest is covered over with a dome of earth, like the flat arch of an oven. Moles are destroyed by means of a paste composed of palm-chrifti and white hellebore, or by flooding the fields which they infest; though, in the latter case, they sometimes escape by ascending trees.

This species is five inches and three quarters in length, and its tail is about one inch long. It has a large head, without any external ears, and eyes so very small and so completely hid in the fur as to make it vulgarly believed that it has none. As it lives entirely below ground, it has certainly no occasion for eyes like other quadrupeds; and as it probably finds its food by its sense of smell, which is acute, its eyes may serve merely as a safeguard to warn it when it happens to emerge from the ground to return to its subterraneous dwelling. This warning may be given by the light falling upon its eyes, which may produce a painful sensation. For the truth of this conjecture, however, we must refer to the anatomists, who might easily determine, from the structure of the eyes, what purpose they are fitted to serve.