Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/35

Rh serving the comparative powers of flight of the two animals. Quick as were the evolutions of the swallows, they were clumsy compared with those of the bat. The more it was pestered by its numerous opponents, the more gracefully did it twist, and turn, and try to escape, which it was evidently desirous of doing, and this its superior power of wing soon enabled it to accomplish, leaving its pursuers far behind.—J.W. Douglas; 4, Waterloo Place, Cobourg Road, June 16, 1842.

Anecdote of a Mole. In the spring of 1839 I was by the side of a large piece of water, and saw the earth heaving up, evidently the effect of the working of a mole; and having read a good deal about moles taking the water, I thought I would try if this one could swim. I therefore put down a stick into the earth, on one side of the mole, and elevating it suddenly with a jerk, threw the animal into the water twelve or fourteen feet. It immediately swam in a straight line towards the edge, using its feet with great rapidity, and proceeded about four feet, when it turned and described a circle, and continued to do so for some time, the circumference becoming less every revolution, until the mole became quite exhausted, remained stationary, and soon ceased to exist. Meanwhile my endeavours to reach it, and if possible save it from its impending fate, were vain; I could not get it in time to save its life, and regretted that I had sacrificed it to my curiosity; its manner in the water, however, satisfied me that a mole can swim, but it probably would not do so voluntarily.—Id.

geographical distribution of vertebrated animals is one of the most interesting branches of Natural History. The causes by which the increase or decrease—the introduction or extermination of a species is governed, are often obvious or easily ascertained; at other times they are lost in the obscurity of past ages or dimmed by the intervention of fiction. Most of those changes of which we can obtain positive evidence are due to the intervention of man: while others—those remote changes of which the geologist tells us, recorded only by evidences exhumed from the bowels of the earth, seem to have taken place long before the commencement of man's irresistible influence. The changes of which the record is within our reach, would appear