There are two words which are translated as Mole in our authorized version of the Bible. One of them is so obscure that there seems no possibility of deciding the creature that is represented by it. We cannot even tell to what class of the animal kingdom it refers, because in more than one place it is mentioned as one of the unclean birds that might not be eaten (translated as _swan_ in our version), whereas, in another place, it is enumerated among the unclean creeping things. [Illustration: THE MOLE-RAT.] We may conjecture that the same word might be used to designate two distinct animals, though we have no clue to their identification. It is rather a strange coincidence, in corroboration of this theory, that our word Mole signifies three distinct objects--firstly, an animal; secondly, a cutaneous growth; and thirdly, a bank of earth. Now, supposing English to be a dead language, like the Hebrew, it may well be imagined that a translator of an English book would feel extremely perplexed when he saw the word Mole used in such widely different senses. The best Hebraists can do no more than offer a conjecture founded on the structure of the word _Tinshemeth_, which is thought by some to be the chameleon. Some think that it is the Mole, some the ibis, some the salamander, while others consider it to be the centipede; and in neither case have any decisive arguments been adduced. We will therefore leave the former of these two names, and proceed to the second, _Chephor-peroth_. This word occurs in that passage of Isaiah which has already been quoted when treating of the bat. "In that day a man shall cast his idols of silver and his idols of gold, which they made each one to himself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." It is highly probable that the animal in question is the Mole of Palestine, which is not the same as our European species, but is much larger in size, and belongs to a different order of mammalia. The true Mole is one of the insectivorous and carnivorous animals, and is allied to the shrews and the hedgehogs; whereas the Mole of Palestine (_Spalax typhlus_) is one of the rodents, and allied to the rabbits, mice, marmots, and jerboas. A better term for it is the Mole-rat, by which name it is familiar to zoologists. It is also known by the names of Slepez and Nenni.