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• חֹלֶד

(חֹלֶד, choled, so called from its gliding [Gesen.] or burrowing [Fü rst]) occurs only in Leviticus 11:29, in the list of un-clean animals. According to the old versions and the Talmud, the Heb. choled denotes "a weasel" (see Lewysohn, Zool. des Talm. p. 91, and Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. et Talm. p. 756); but if the word is identical with the Arabic chuld and the Syriac chuldo, as Bochart (Hieroz. 2, 435) and others have endeavored to show, there is no doubt that "a mole" is the animal indicated. Gesenius (Thesaur. p. 474), however, has the following very true observation: "Satis constat animalium nomina persaepe in hac lingua hoc, in alia cognata aliud, id vero simile, animal significare." He prefers to render the term by "weasel," as in the Sept. (γαλή ), Vulg. (mustela), and the English version. (See MOLE).

Moles are common enough in Palestine. Hasselquist (Travels, p. 120), speaking of the country between Jaffai and Ramah, says he had never seen in any place the ground so cast up by moles as in these plains. There was scarcely a yard's length between the mole-hills. It is not improbable that both the Talpa Europaea and the T. caeca, the blind mole of which Aristotle speaks (Hist. Anim. 1, 8, 3), occur in Palestine, though we have no definite information on this point. The ancients represented the mole as having no eyes, which assertion later scientific writers believed they had disproved by showing our species to be possessed of these organs, though exceedingly small. Nevertheless, recent observations have proved that a species, in other respects scarcely, if at all, to be distinguished from the common, is totally destitute of eyes, and consequently has received the name of Talpa caeca. It is to be found in Italy, and probably extends to the East, instead of the European. Moles must not, however, be considered as forming a part of the rodent order, whereof all the families and genera are provided with strong incisor teeth, like rats and squirrels, and therefore intended for subsisting chiefly on grain and nuts; they are, on the contrary, supplied with a great number of small teeth, to the extent of twenty-two in each jaw-indicating a partial regimen; for they feed on worms, larvae, and underground insects, as well as on roots, and thus belong to the insectivorous order, which brings the application of the name somewhat nearer to carnivora and its received interpretation "weasel."

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