1120 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



along streams and in hardwood bush; here they live somewhat 

 after the manner of a Field-mouse, but also digging and tun- 

 nelling in a way that recalls the Moles. 



The furrowed — sometimes tunnelled — track that this ani- 

 mal leaves in snow is an exact expression of its methods and 

 y of its summer life beneath the 



/^A// /' Y'yoyz^^^y'y leaves and rubbish in the woods. 

 / "'" ' " ■- I never realized this fully 



^ ' ' '^ , , - -s^ until I chanced to see one in its 



/ ' daily life at Cos Cob. The note 



;t^ J ^ ^ in my journal runs thus: 



/'; June 30, 1905. — This morn- 



'' '^'//'■/'^S'^^M/'^i'y///'^'/ ''^ ing at nine I sat watching a 

 '' ^ ., , u „ , u Hare m the woods; there was 



Fig. 254 — The furrowed trail of the Mole-shrew 



°'''"^""='- a rustling of leaves. Then I saw 



the dry brown carpet near me lifting along a crooked line. 

 At first I thought it must be a Chipmunk driving a new 

 air-shaft from below, but the rustling continued. At one 

 point a sharp nose appeared and worked about in the air, 

 then speedily was withdrawn. The heaving of the leaf-bed 

 continued at the rate of a very slow walk; then at a bare place 

 the heaver emerged for a moment. It was a Blarina. He 

 disappeared at once under the next leaf-bed, and so went on 

 burrowing his way, not mole-like, in the earth, but in a fashion 

 of his own beneath the leaves. Twenty-five feet farther I lost 

 all trace of the leaf-heaver. I examined his trail, but found no 

 tunnel; all had closed behind him. Free as a Mole in the soil, 

 he drove his sub-leaf gangway where he would, and doubtless 

 lived on the country as he went. This, then, was his way of 

 life — this little inter-world betwixt floor and carpet was for 

 him; and thus I learned why he had bartered his eyesight for 

 keener powers of smell and touch. 



Less aquatic probably than either Marsh-shrew or Star- 

 nosed Mole, the Blarina is nevertheless rarely far from 

 water. All that I have seen or taken were within 100 

 yards of a stream or pond, and most of them on the 

 water's very edge. 



