666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



over each other on the ground, locked in spiteful embrace and 

 uttering a rapid succession of shrill cries, which pierce the ears 

 like needles of sound. It is a most fortunate circumstance that 

 the larger animals are not so vindictively pugnacious as the 

 moles and the shrews ; for it would be a very hard case if we were 

 unable to put two horses or two cows in the same field without 

 the certainty of immediate fight, and the probability that one of 

 the combatants would lose its life in the struggle." 



The bite of such a little creature obviously need not be feared 

 by a human being, though ancient prejudice attributes to it such 

 venomous properties that in many districts in England the viper 

 is no more dreaded than the shrew. Even the touch of the ani- 

 mal's tiny foot was believed to cause pains which could only be 

 relieved on the " like cures like " principle. 



The following curious account of this latter superstition is 

 from Gilbert White's " Natural History of Selborne " : " At the 

 fourth 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. Now a shrew ash is an ash whose twigs or branches, 

 when gently applied to the limbs of cattle, will immediately re- 

 lieve 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 baneful and deleterious a nature that wherever it 

 creeps 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 accident, to which they were 

 continually liable, our provident forefathers always kept a shrew 

 ash at hand, which, when once medicated, 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." 



The shrew is often seen near reposing cattle, and this habit 

 probably gave the chance for putting upon it any unexplained 

 malady that the cattle might suffer. But it has been well sug- 

 gested that the shrew goes to domestic animals for the insects 

 which light upon them. From the fact that the shrew will eat 

 one of its own species, if slain in battle, it is evident that insects 

 and worms do not form its whole diet. " One of these little creat- 

 ures," says Wood, " has been discovered and killed while grasping 

 a frog by the hind-leg ; and so firmly did it maintain its grasp, 

 that even after its death the sharp teeth still clung to the limb of 

 the frog. Whether the creature intended to eat the frog, or 

 whether it was urged to this act by revenge or other motive, is 

 uncertain." 



