The Pyrenean Desman,[141] an insect-eating water animal.] But all these come out upon the land and use their burrows chiefly for homes and nurseries. We can match the mole better than this among _rodents_, for in Eastern Europe, India, and Africa, there are blind creatures called Mole-rats[139] (see Fig. 57), with broad flat heads, small eyes hidden in their fur, short tails, and feet with sharp claws, which live almost entirely underground, burrowing subterranean galleries in the sandy plains in search of roots, as the mole does for worms; while the Pouched Rats[140] of North America also live in burrows, throwing up hills just like mole-hills, and gnawing roots and buried seeds, which they carry in their large cheek-pouches, to store up in their underground chamber for winter food. Nevertheless, the rodents can scarcely compete with the mole as burrowers, and it is not till we come to the water-animals that _they_ begin to have the best of it. True, the insect-eaters have the Water-shrew and the curious West African Shrew,[143] with its broad tail; while the Desman[144] of Russia and the Pyrenees (see Fig. 58), with his dense furry coat, his broad tail, and his webbed feet, is quite a match for the gnawing Musk-rat or Musquash of North America, for they both live in fortresses on the river-banks, to which hidden passages are well contrived to elude pursuit; and while the desman, with his curious movable snout, pokes about in the Russian or Pyrenean streams after leeches, water-snails and insects, the musquash in America gnaws off the roots and stems of water-plants. [Illustration: Fig. 59. The Beaver,[142] a gnawing water-animal.]