About the middle of June the moles begin to fall in love, and are as furious in their attachments as in all other phases of their nature.  At that time two male moles cannot meet without mutual jealousy, and they straightway begin to fight, scratching, tearing, and biting with such insane fury that they seem unconscious [Page 209] of anything except the heat of battle.  Indeed the whole life of the mole is one of fury, and he eats like a starving tiger, tearing and rending his prey with claws and teeth, and crunching audibly the body of the worm between the sharp points.  Magnify the mole to the size of the lion and you will have a beast more terrible than the world has yet seen.  Though nearly blind, and therefore incapable of following its prey by sight, it would be active beyond conception, springing this way and that way as it goes along, leaping with lightness and quickness upon any animal which it meets, rending it in pieces in a moment, thrusting its blood-thirsty snout into the body of its victim, eating the still warm and bleeding flesh, and instantly searching for fresh prey.  Such a creature would, without the least hesitation, devour a serpent twenty feet in length, and so terrible would be its voracity that it would eat twenty or thirty of such snakes in a day as easily as it devours the same number of worms.  With one grasp of its teeth and one stroke of its claws, it could tear an ox asunder; and if it should happen to enter a fold of sheep or enclosure of cattle, it would kill them all for the mere lust of slaughter.  Let, then, two of such animals meet in combat, and how terrific would be the battle!  Fear is a feeling of which the mole seems to be utterly unconscious, and, when fighting with one of its own species, he gives his whole energies to the destruction of his opponent without seeming to heed the injuries inflicted upon himself.  From the foregoing sketch the reader will be able to estimate the extraordinary energies of this animal, as well as the wonderful instincts with which it is endowed.

The fur of the mole is noted for its clean, velvety aspect; and that an animal should be able to pass unsoiled through earth of all textures is a really remarkable phenomenon.  It is partly to be explained by the character of the hair, and partly by that of the skin.  The hair of the mole is peculiar on account of its want of “set.”  The tops of the hairs do not point in any particular direction, but may be pressed equally forward or backward or to either side.  The microscope reveals the cause of this peculiarity.  The hair is extremely fine at its exit from the skin, and gradually increases in thickness until it reaches its full width when it again diminishes.  This alternation occurs several times in each hair, and gives the peculiar velvet-like texture with which we are all so familiar.  There is scarcely any coloring matter in the slender portion of the hair, and the beautiful changeable coppery [Page 210] hues of the fur is owing to this structure.