66 4 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 





cies enduring severe cold. The sub-family Soricina is the only 

 one represented in North America ; other sub-families are found 

 in Europe, Asia, the East Indies, and in south and central Africa ; 

 none as yet have been detected in South America. Most of the 

 American species belong to the genus Sorex (Linnseus). Prof. 

 Spencer F. Baird described twelve species, varying in length from 

 three to four and a half inches, in Vol. VIII of the Pacific Pail- 

 road Reports. In color they range from blackish and brownish to 

 grayish above and lighter to whitish beneath. Most of the species 

 belong on the Pacific coast or in the Northwestern States and Ter- 

 ritories. The 8. personatus is the least of the American shrews, 

 and among the smallest of the quadrupeds of this country, being 

 not . quite three inches long ; it belongs in the South Atlantic 



States. In the genus Blarina 

 (Gray) the body is stout, the 

 tail shorter than the head ; 

 the skull is short and broad, 

 and the fore-paws are large 

 in proportion to the hind- 

 paws. This genus is peculiar 

 to America. The mole shrew 

 (B. talpoides, Gray), the lar- 

 gest of the American shrews, 

 four and a half inches long, 

 is found from Nova Scotia 

 to Lake Superior, and south- 

 ward to Georgia. It is dark, 

 ashy gray above and paler below, with whitish feet. Several 

 other species are described by Baird, of which two are in Mexico 

 and Texas. 



Four species of shrew are mentioned by Wood as inhabiting 

 the British Isles : the erd shrew, the water shrew, the oared 

 shrew, and the rustic shrew. The erd shrew, also called the shrew 

 mouse, is the common shrew of England, and is found also all 

 over Europe, Unlike most animals, they are often found dead ; 

 though, owing to their nocturnal habits, they are seldom seen 

 alive. Aubyn Battye writes in " Longman's Magazine " : " Every 

 countryman is familiar with the sight of shrew mice lying dead 

 on autumn footpaths and by sides of roads. The hot, dry English 

 September weather presses very hardly on this class of animals. 

 Worms retire then a long way below ground, and even the strong 

 mole often can not follow them in the hard-baked ground, and 

 has to trust to slugs for maintenance. The damp, dead leaves of 

 the hedge-bottom, which were once the shrew's best hunting- 

 ground, are dry and deserted now a fatal change of things. 

 Yes, dead we often see the shrew ; and picking him up we hold in 



Fig. 1. -Mole Shrew. 



