Talpa coecior

Blinder than a mole. The ancients thought moles had no eyes, but they have two small eyes, affording them so mush sight, as to enable them to know when they have emerged through the earth, and they no sooner perceive the light, than they return into their burrows, where alone they can be safe. This proverb is applied to persons who are exceedingly slow in conceiving, or understanding what is said to them; also to persons searching for what lays immediately before them. "If it was a bear," we say, "it would bite you." To the same purport is "Leberide caecior." By the leberis, the Latins meant the dry and cast skin of a serpent, or of any other animal, accustomed to change its coat, in which the apertures for the eyes only remain. With us, it is usual, in censuring the same defect, to say, "He is as blind as a beetle." "We are all of us used to be Argus's abroad, but moles at home," but how much better would it be to correct an error in ourselves, than to find an hundred in our neighbours.