172 MAMMALIA. 



an exhausted state, making- a few ineffectual efforts to twist his body, 

 while the Blariua was busy tearing out his masseter and temporal 

 muscles. A large part of the flesh was eaten from his tail, and the 

 temporal and masseter muscles and eye of one side, were removed, 

 so that the under jaw hung loose. The temporal was torn loose 

 from the cranium on the other side, and as I watched him the Blarina 

 cut the other side of the mandible loose, and be^an to tear the 



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longicolli and rectus muscles. His motions were quite frantic, and 

 he jerked and tore out considerable fragments with his long anterior 

 teeth. He seemed especially anxious to get down the snake's throat 

 (where some of his kin had probably ' gone before'), and revolved 

 on his long axis, now with his belly up, now with his sides, in his 

 energetic efforts. He had apparently not been bitten by the snake, 

 and was uninjured. Whether the shrew killed the snake is of course 

 uncertain, but the animus with which he devoured the reptile gives 

 some color to the suspicion that he in some way frightened him to 

 exhaustion." 



The Shrew is rarely eaten by birds or beasts of prey, but is 

 usually left where killed, which fact is doubtless due to the offensive 

 odor from its scent glands. That it is sometimes eaten appears 

 from the fact that a disgorged pellet from some bird of prey, found 

 in the Catskills by Mr. E. P. Bicknell and Dr. A. K. Fisher, contained 

 the recognizable remains of this species.* 



The Short-tailed Shrew is readily taken in an ordinary mouse-trap, 

 baited with meat, set near the mouth of a burrow. I have cauo-ht 



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many in this way. 



I am not aware that anything has been published relating to its 

 breeding habits, and the only facts that I can contribute are in regard 

 to the time when its young are produced. On the 22d of April, 

 1878, I found a couple of these Shrews under a plank- walk near my 

 museum. They proved to be male and female, and the latter con- 

 tained young which, from their size, would probably have been born 



* Bicknell in Trans. Linn. Soc., vol. I, 1882, p. 122. 



