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 the _Condylura_, 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.