[P] This mole, says he, was found on the highway. It is a little longer than the common mole, from which it differs in no respect but the colour of the skin, which is diversified on the back and the belly with black and white spots, and these intermixed with a few grey hairs as fine as silk. The snout of this animal is long, and covered with hair of a considerable length; and its eyes are so small that it is difficult to distinguish them.--_Albert Seba, vol. I. p. 63._ I received from M. Sonnerat the skin of what he calls the Mole of the Cape of Good Hope (_fig. 83._) which bears a near resemblance to the common moles, excepting the fore-feet and the head, which is much larger, and has a snout somewhat like the Guinea Pig. Its hair is dark brown, with yellow tips, which gives it a bright shade, and its tail is covered with long hairs of a yellowish white. Upon the whole, I am inclined to think that it cannot be considered as a simple variety, but that it is a different species. _Engraved for Barr's Buffon._ [Illustration: FIG. 82. _Mole._] [Illustration: FIG. 83. _Cape Mole._] _Bats._ [Illustration: FIG. 84. _Long Ear'd._] [Illustration: FIG. 85. _Pipistiell._] [Illustration: FIG. 86. _Common Bat._] THE BAT. Though all beings are equally perfect in themselves, as coming from the hands of the Creator, yet, in their relation to man, some appear more accomplished, and others more imperfect or deformed. The former are those whose figures are agreeable to us, and which we esteem complete, because all their parts are well connected, their members proportioned, and their functions easy and natural. The latter are those whose qualities are offensive to us, whose nature deviates from other beings, and whose forms differ from those whence we drew our first sensations, and those ideas which serve to model our judgments. The head of a man upon the neck of a horse, its body covered with feathers, and terminated with the tail of a fish, is a picture of enormous deformity, only because it is an assemblage of the most incongruous diversities of nature. An animal, like the bat, which is half quadruped and half bird, and which, in fact, is neither the one nor the other, is a kind of monster, because it unites the attributes of two such different genera, and resembles none of those models presented to us in the grand classes of Nature. It is an imperfect quadruped, and a still more imperfect bird; as a quadruped it should have four feet, and as a bird it should have feathers and wings. In the bat the fore feet are, properly, neither feet nor wings, though the animal uses them for the purpose of flying and dragging himself along the ground; they are two shapeless extremities, of which the bones are of an enormous length, and connected by a membrane neither covered with feathers nor hair like the rest of the body; they are a kind of small wings or winged paws, in which we only see one claw about an inch in length, and with which