CONCERNING SHREWS. 



665 



our hand a little creature of an oddly quaint and old-world ap- 

 pearance, with a coat like velvet, brownish black above and gray- 

 ish white beneath. But the two ends of him strike us most ; a 

 long, pink-tipped snout, and a blunt, four-sided tail." Shrews are 

 accustomed to eating much and often, which doubtless accounts for 

 their dying so speedily when food becomes scarce. The reason 

 why their bodies are seen lying about instead of being devoured 

 by flesh-eating creatures is probably because they secrete a strong 

 scent that does not seem to please the palate of cat or weasel. 

 Cats will catch them to play with, and finally kill them, but will 

 not eat them. Owls eat them, however, and so does the kestrel 

 falcon. On account of this scent, the animal is known in some 

 parts of England by the name of fetid shrew. In Scotland it is 

 called the ranny. The Latin term araneus, or spider-like, has 

 been applied to this creat- 

 ure by several writers, be- 

 cause it was said to bite 

 poisonously like a spider. 

 The body of the shrew is 

 not much over two inches 

 long, and its whole length 

 from the snout to the tip 

 of the tail is about four 

 inches. It lives in little 

 tunnels which it digs in the 

 earth, and which serve also 

 as a hunting-ground. The 

 nest in which the young 

 shrews are brought forth 

 is not made in the burrow, but in some little hollow or a hole in a 

 bank. It is composed of leaves and like substances and is entered 

 by a hole at the side. The young are from five to seven in num- 

 ber, and are generally born in the spring. 



The word shrew applied to a scolding woman has a different 

 derivation, according to the dictionaries, from the name of our 

 little insect-hunter. But it is no libel on the animal to give its 

 name to a vixen even of a more unconquerable sort than is rep- 

 resented in Shakespeare's " Taming of the Shrew," as the follow- 

 ing character which "Wood gives it abundantly shows : 



" Sometimes the shrews mutually kill each other, for they are 

 most pugnacious little beings, and on small ground of quarrel 

 enter into persevering and deadly combats ; which, if they took 

 place between larger animals, would be terrifically grand, but in 

 such little creatures appear almost ludicrous. They hold with 

 their rows of bristling teeth with the pertinacity of bull-dogs, and, 

 heedless of everything but the paroxysm of their blind fury, roll 



Fig. 2. Common European Shrew (Sorex araneus). 



