THE UROTRICHUS(Urotrichus Gibsii).
THE UROTRICHUS(Urotrichus Gibsii).
Its colour is bluish-black when alive, but in the dried specimens changes to sooty-brown. The hair is lustrous, and, where it reflects the light, has a hoary appearance, and, as with the mole, it can be smoothed in either direction; this is a wise and admirable arrangement, as it enables the animal to back through its underground roads, as well as to go through them head-first. Its nose or snout is very curious, and much like that of a pig—only that it is lengthened out into a cylindrical tube, covered with short thick hairs, and terminated in a naked fleshy kind of bulb or gland; and this gland is pierced by two minute holes, which are the nostrils. Each nostril has a little fold of membrane hanging down over it likea shutter, effectually preventing sand and minute particles of dust from getting into the nose whilst digging.
Now this curious nasal appendage is to this miner not only an organ of smell, but also serves the purpose of hands and eyes. His forefeet, as I shall by-and-by show you, are wholly digging implements, and, from their peculiar horny character, not in any way adapted to convey the sense of touch. Eyes he has none, and but a very rudimentary form of ear; his highly sensitive moveable nose serves him admirably in the dark tunnels, in which his time is passed, to feel his way and scent out the lower forms of insect life, on which he principally feeds. Had he eyes he could not see, for the sunlight never peeps in to cheer his subterranean home, and sound reaches not down to him. The busy hum of insect life, and the song of feathered choristers, he hears not, so that highly-developed hearing appendages would have been useless and superfluous.
But his nose in every way compensates for all these apparent deficiencies, and shows us how to be admired is Creative Goodness in shaping and adapting the meanest and humblest of His creatures to its habits and modes of life. His forefeet are, like the mole’s, converted into diggers;the strong scoop-shaped nail, like a small garden-trowel at the end of each toe, enables him to dig with wonderful ease and celerity. The hind-feet are shaped into a kind of scraper by the toe being curiously bent, and the length of the hind-foot is about two-thirds more than the fore or digging hand. When I come to his habits, as differing from the mole, I shall be able to point out the use of this strange scraper-like form of hind-foot.
So far I have endeavoured to give you an outline of his general personal appearance, differing from the shrew in the peculiar arrangement of his feet, and from the mole in having a long hairy tail. His nearest relative (if at all related) is theCondylura, or Star-nosed Mole, whose nose has a fringe of star-shaped processes round its outer edge, about twenty-two in number. The first and only place in which I ever met this strange little fellow was on the Chilukweyuk prairies. These large grassy openings, or prairies, are situated near the Fraser river, on the western side of the Cascade Mountains. Small streams wind and twist through these prairies like huge water-snakes, widening out here and there into large glassy pools.
The scenery is romantic and beautiful beyond description. Towering up into the very clouds,as a background, are the mighty hills of the Cascade range, their misty summits capped with perpetual snow—their craggy sides rent into chasms and ravines, whose depths and solitudes no man’s foot has ever trodden, and clad up to the very snow-line with mighty pine and cedar-trees. The Chilukweyuk river already referred to washes one side of the prairie. Silvery-green and ever-trembling cottonwood trees, ruddy black-birch, and hawthorn, like a girdle, encircle the prairie, and form a border, of Nature’s own weaving, to the brilliant carpet of emerald grass, patterned with wild flowers of every hue and tint,—all shading pleasantly away, and losing their brilliancy in the dark green pine-trees.
In the sandy banks on the edge of the Chilukweyuk river, and the various little streams winding through the prairie-grass, lives the Urotrichus. His mansion is a large hole, lined with bits of grass, and this hole is his sleeping-room and drawing-room. A genuine bachelor, he never dines at home. He has lots of roads tunnelled away from his central mansion, radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. His tunnels are not at all like those of the mole; he never throws up mounds or heaps of earth, in order to get rid of the surplus material he digs out, as the mole does,but makes open cuttings at short intervals, about four or five inches long; and now we shall see the use of those curiously-formed scraper-like hind-feet.
As he digs out the tunnel with his trowel-hands, he throws back the earth towards his hind-feet; these, from their peculiar shape, enable him to back this dirt out of the hole, using them like two scrapers—only that he pushes the dirt away, instead of pulling it towards himself. Having backed the dirt clear of the mouth of the hole, he throws it out over the edge of the open cutting; after having dug in some distance—and finding, I daresay, the labour of backing-out rather irksome—he digs up through the ground to the surface, makes another open cutting, and then begins a new hole or tunnel, and disappears into the earth again. When he has gone as far from his dormitory as he deems wise, he again digs through, and clears away the rubbish. This road is now complete, so he goes back again to his central mansion, to begin others at his leisure.
It is very difficult to watch the movements and discover the feeding-time, or what he feeds on, of an animal which lives almost wholly underground in the daytime; but I am pretty sure these tunnels are made for and used as roadways,or underground trails for the purpose of hunting. He is a night-feeder, and exposed to terrible perils from the various small carnivora that prowl about like bandits in the dark—stoats, weasels, martens, and skunks. So, to avoid and escape these enemies, he comes quietly along the subterranean roadways, and cautiously emerging at the open cutting, feels about with his wonderful nose; and I doubt not, guided by an acute sense of smell, pounces upon larvæ, slugs, beetles, or any nocturnal creeping-thing he can catch; and so traversing his different hunting-trails during the night, manages in that way to fare sumptuously, and safe from danger. Turning in, to sleep away his breakfast, dinner, and supper, at the first peep of the grey morning, he dozes on, until hunger again prompts him to make another excursion on the ‘hunting-path.’
It is scarcely possible to imagine a more skilfully-contrived hunting-system, to avoid danger and facilitate escape, than are these tunnel-trails with open cuttings; for the sly little hunter has, on the slightest alarm, two means of flight at his disposal—one before and another behind him; and the fur, as I have already mentioned, laying as evenly when smoothed from tail to head as it does when turned in the natural direction, enableshim to turn astern, and retreat tail-first into his hole as easily as he could go head-first.
When we contemplate this grotesque and strangely-formed little creature, and see how wisely and wonderfully it is fashioned and adapted to its destined place, supplying another missing link in the great chain of Nature, we cannot but feel God’s power and omnipresence. Feeding in the dark and living in the dark, eyes would have been superfluous; sound, save from vibration in the earth, or when hunting at the open cuttings, would seldom reach this tinyhermit; hence the hearing organs have no external appendage for catching sounds, and are but in a rudimentary form. Hands fashioned into marvellous digging-tools, and hind-feet turned into scrapers, for getting rid of the rubble dug out with the hands, and nose possessing smell and touch in their most exquisite forms, these serve him for guides of unerring certainty and undeviating precision through his darksome wanderings.