250 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIOISTAL MUSEUM vol.86 



SOREX LONGIROSTRIS LONGIROSTRIS Bachman: Bachman's Shrew 



These minute shrews are rarely taken by collectors. One was 

 found by Raymond J. Fleetwood in a posthole in a field overgrown 

 with sedgegrass at Greenbrier, Sevier County. Komarek and 

 Komarek (1938, p. 146) mention another that had been trapped in 

 one of the buildings of a C. C. C. camp in the Great Smoky Moun- 

 tains National Park. The Sevier County occurrence indicates that 

 this species may range northward in the valleys of eastern Tennessee. 

 The taking of one of these small shrews by Perrygo and Schaefer 

 near Reelfoot Lake on October 1, 1937, extends the range across the 

 State to the Mississippi bottomlands. This male was trapped barely 

 above the water line in matted decayed leaves beside a rotten log in 

 the swamp bordering Eeelfoot Lake. 



The identification of these two specimens from Tennessee has led 

 to a restudy of specimens previously referred to Sorex fontinalls and 

 Sorex longirostris longirostris. It so happened that the specimens 

 from southern localities available to Hollister (1911, pp. 378-380) 

 had the third upper unicuspid smaller than the fourth. The larger 

 series of specimens now available exhibits so many exceptions that I 

 am unable to accept the conclusions of Jackson in regard to the dis- 

 tinctness of these two slirews. The characters listed by Jackson 

 (1928, pp. 37, 83) as distinguishing S. longirostris from S. fontinalis, 

 including (1) relatively shorter, broader rostrum, (2) shorter and 

 more crowded unicuspid row, (3) third upper unicuspid smaller than 

 fourth, (4) anteroposterior diameter less than transverse diameter of 

 unicuspid teeth, (5) anteroposterior diameter of molariform teeth 

 relatively greater, and (6) first incisors, upper and lower, relatively 

 smaller, do not appear to me so to diflferentiate a series of 20 speci- 

 mens. This series comprises 10 Maryland specimens previously re- 

 ferred to /S. fontinalis, collected at Bowie, Cabin John, Cold Spring 

 Swamp, Glen Echo Heights, Hollywood, Hyattsville, Laurel (2), 

 and Sandy Spring (2), and a like number of S. longirostris from 

 Chesapeake Beach, Md., Falls Church, Va., Pisgah National Forest 

 and Raleigh (2), N. C, Young Harris, Ga., Phillippy and Greenbrier 

 (Sevier County), Tenn., and Bicknell, Ind. (2). After tabulating 

 this series according to the relative sizes of the third and fourth 

 unicuspids, it was found that this character cannot be relied on. 

 The dimensions of the molariform teeth, the unicuspids, and the 

 first incisors can be matched in several specimens in both groups. 

 In one of the Tennessee specimens the anteroposterior diameter of the 

 third molariform teeth is less than the transverse, and in the other 

 these measurements are reversed. Micrometer measurements of the 

 rostrum and of the teeth made with a binocular failed to differentiate 

 readily specimens from the supposed range of S. longirostris from 



