1910 Moffat. — The Atthunnal Mortality among Shrews. 125 



It is to be wished that we had equally exhaustive figures 

 from some Irish count}^ But it ma)^ be taken as certain that 

 the Lesser Shrew would nowhere come near to heading the 

 list of the Owl's victims, as the Common Shrew does in 

 England. An analysis made b}^ Mr. Adams in 1897 i^i ^^ 

 Antrim locality — Ballycastle — of pellets of the Long-eared 



Owl gave, as regards mamn 



Lesser Shrew, 



Rat, 



House Mouse, 



Wood Mouse, 



Bats, 



als, the following result: — ' 



22 



5 



357 



3 



397 



Thus, while the Wood Mouse, from a mere 16 per cent, in 

 Cheshire, has swollen in proportion to as much as 90 per 

 cent, in Antrim — in consequence, no doubt, of the total absence 

 of Voles in the latter locality— we do not find in the case of 

 the lycsser Shrew" any greater increase than from i per cent, 

 on the English side to 2J per cent, on the Irish side of the 

 Channel. It would, of course, be more satisfactory if the 

 census in each case had consisted of pellets of the same 

 species of owl. But there is, at any rate, very strong pre- 

 sumptive evidence that Sorex ini7iutus\\2iS in this country quite 

 failed to fill the room which was left for its multiplication 

 by the absence of the more powerful S. araneus. And it 

 should not, therefore, be difiicult to collect such notes on 

 the prevalence of the autumnal mortality in different districts 

 as to yield a good idea as to whether it is uniformly distri- 

 buted or not. 



Mr. Adams is, I think, quite right in regarding as unsatis- 

 factory most of the familiar explanations that have hitherto 

 been put forward as accounting for the supposed epidemic. 

 The most familiar of all is that the corpses are those of 

 animals killed and left uneaten ; but, as Mr. Adams says, if 

 this were the case, the killing would not take place in autumn 

 more than at any other time, and it has not been proved that 

 any of our native wild animals—though the domestic cat does 



^ Irish Naturalist, Vol. vi., 1897, p. 175. 



