Cooper Shrew 1099 



so ferociously quarrelsome and cannibal as these, do indeed 

 pair, though the two continue together for a brief season only, 

 perhaps an hour or two during the season of meridian ardour, 

 then part to meet no more as friends. 



The only facts bearing on the case I find in Herrick's 

 "Mammals of Minnesota." His account is so charming, and 

 new, that I give it in full.' Not the least important feature 

 is the date — November. 



"In November, 1883, the writer lay encamped under the 

 canopy of the sky in Pine County, Minn., endeavouring to 

 escape the chill of the frosty air by drawing the blanket close 

 and hovering nearer the camp-fire. To a person alone in the 

 woods for the first time after a long interval, every sound is 

 novel and more or less charged with mystery. The wind 

 stirred the tree tops, and impinging boughs clattered, and the 

 trunks groaned under the tortion, each tree with its own 

 doleful note. The few remaining pines added their sighing 

 to the many melancholy sounds belonging to an autumn forest 

 at night. But amid all the sounds nothing could be identified 

 as coming from anj'thing living, even the distant howling of 

 Wolves was silenced, and I began to feel that the attempt to 

 gain personal knowledge of the ways of the woodsy mammals 

 by night study would prove futile, and composed myself to 

 sleep. The half-somnolent reverie which forms the prelude 

 to slumber was b'roken by faint melodious sounds on an exces- 

 sively high key — so high that it seemed that I might be simply 

 hearing the lower notes of an elfin symphony, the upper 

 registers in which were beyond the powers of human ears to 

 distinguish. The sounds were distinctly musical, and reminded 

 me of the contented twitter of birds finding resting places among 

 the boughs at night. Without moving, I turned my eyes upon 

 the fire-lit circle, about which the darkness formed an appar- 

 ently impenetrable wall. Only the most careful scrutiny 

 enabled me to discover the tiny musicians. Within a few feet 

 of my head, upon a decayed log, raced a pair of Shrews {S. 

 cooperi),^ so minute as to escape my observation at first. Up 



' Mam. Minn., 1892, pp. 41-2. ' 5. cooperi = S. personatus. 



