MOLADAH (rool'a-dah), (Heb. mo-law daw', birth).
A city first given to Judah, and afterward to Simeon (Josh. xix :2 ; I Chron. iv:28). It was in the southerly part of Judah. The place was re occupied after the exile (Nell. xi:26). It is iden tified with Millz (Robinson, ii:621), seven and a half miles southwest of Arad, and fourteen south east of Beersheba. (Stewart, Tent and Khan, p. 217). There are ruins of a fortified town, two wells, one with water at the depth of forty feet ; and the wells are surrounded with marble troughs. Arab tradition says that Abraham dug these wells and watered his flocks here.
NOLE (m01), (Heb. khaf-ore', Arabic, khuld, Lev. xi:3o, in our version 'weasel Although the similarity of sound in names is an unsafe ground to depend upon when it is ap plied to specific animals, still, the Hebrew and Syriac appearing likewise to imply creeping into, creeping underneath by burrowing—characteris tics most obvious in moles—and the Arabic de nomination being undoubted, ehaled may be as sumed to indicate the above animal. in preference to chinsemeth, which, in conformity with the opin ion of Bochart, is referred to the chameleon. This conclusion is the more to be relied on as the ani mal is rather common in Syria, and in some places abundant. Zoologists have considered the particular species to be the Talpa Europma, which, under the name of the common mole, is so well known as not to require a more particular de scription. The ancients represented the mole to
have no eyes; which assertion later scientific writ ers believed they had disproved by showing our species to be possessed of these organs, though exceedingly small. Nevertheless, recent observa tions have proved that a species, in other respects scarcely, if at all, to be distinguished from the common, is totally destitute of eyes, and conse quently has received the name of Talpa arca. It IS tO be found in Italy, and probably extends to the East, instead of the Europa,a. 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 sub sisting 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, larvx, and underground insects, as well as on roots, and thus belongs to the insectivorous order ; which brings the application of the name somewhat nearer to carnivora and its received interpretation 'weasel.' C. H. S.
L.