66 MAMMALS

leaves as well; some of them, like the mole, eat
worms ; one of them, the potamogale, feeds on fish,
and, unlike the rest of the order, has no collar-bones.
Most of them have soft fur; but one genus, that
containing the hedge-hogs, has a spiny coat, and
another (Cenéetes), which includes the Madagascar
ground-hog, is more or less spiny. There are some two
hundred species altogether, the most numerous being
the various kinds of shrews. Among these are the
tree-shrews ( 7upazide@), that are like squirrels, both in
habit and appearance ; the jumping shrews (Macro-
scelide), long-nosed and long-legged, which hop about
like tiny kangaroos ; the true shrews (Sordcide), which
are often mistaken for mice, but differ markedly from
them in their sickle-shaped incisor teeth. There are
many kinds of shrews —earless shrews, water shrews,
musk shrews, burrowing shrews, swimming shrews,
web-footed shrews, and mole shrews, which last,
however, belong to a different family, the Zalpidz,
which includes the desmans and the moles. The
mole extends from England to Japan, and fossil
moles have been found in the rocks all the way down
to the Lower Miocene. The mole has rudimentary
eyes, but no external ears; its fur is like velvet, set
vertically on the skin, so that it can pass backwards
or forwards along its burrow with equal ease. Its
shoulder-girdle is even more powerful than that of
the bats, and the humerus bears a number of ridges
for the attachment of the muscles that make it easily
distinguishable from that of any other mammal. It
has been said that the mole is as happy as a skylark,
Assuredly his frame is as marvellously adapted for