246 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with lameness or soreness wherever the monse sets down one of 

 its little feet. Serious disability often comes from the touch of 

 the \ 'og mouse/ In some extreme cases the affliction is well-nigh 

 incurable, and may last a lifetime. My old friend said that it 

 was no hearsay matter with him. He had ' seen 'og mice both in 

 Northamptonshire and 'ere in Hamerica.' One of his colts l was 

 disabled by a 'og mouse running hover it, and was a long, long time 

 getting well.' A striking peculiarity of the hog-faced mouse, ac- 

 cording to my old friend, is, that it is never seen at rest, but always 

 ' on a dead run,' as if fleeing from pursuit." 



It seems to me almost certain that this redoubtable f 'og mouse ' 

 is merely a shrew, whose long and pointed snout might suggest 

 the visage of a hog. In Great Britain the most maleficent pow- 

 ers are commonly attributed to shrews, and an interesting passage 

 concerning the matter in White's Natural History and Antiqui- 

 ties of Selborne deserves to be quoted verbatim : " At the south 

 corner of the plestor, or area, near the church, there stood, about 

 twenty years ago, a very old, grotesque, hollow pollard ash, which 

 for ages had been looked on with no small veneration as a shrew 

 ash whose twigs or branches, when gently applied to the limbs of 

 cattle, will immediately relieve the pains which a beast suffers 

 from the running of a shrew mouse over the part affected ; for it 

 is supposed that a shrew mouse is of so baleful and deleterious a 

 nature that, wherever it creej)s over a beast, be it horse, cow, or 

 sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and 

 threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this acci- 

 dent, to which they were continually liable, our provident fore- 

 fathers always kept a shrew ash at hand, which, when once medi- 

 cated, would maintain its virtue forever. A shrew ash was made 

 thus : into the body of the tree a deep hole was bored with an 

 auger, and a poor devoted shrew mouse was thrust in alive, and 

 plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations long since 

 forgotten. As the ceremonies necessary for such a consecration 

 are no longer understood, all succession is at an end, and no such 

 tree is known to subsist in the manor or hundred." 



It appears that similar powers for evil have also been attrib- 

 uted, in parts at least of Great Britain, to field mice, which by 

 creeping over the backs of sheep were thought to produce paraly- 

 sis. The remedy for such an injury was to inclose the mouse in 

 a tree, and stroke the afflicted animal with its branches as above 

 described. How far, if at all, these old-country superstitions 

 have become naturalized among us I do not know. 



The belief that the American porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus) 

 can at will " shoot " its quills is one of wide acceptance among 

 unscientific people. I remember the woodcut in my first spelling- 

 book, labeled porcupine, and how, in reply to my questions in 



