37 



deadly conflict. One of the combatants had seized the other by 

 a hind leg, to which he clung with the ferocious tenacity of a 

 bulldog, despite the agonised screams of the sufferer. Only by 

 severe pressure upon his throat with the butt end of ray rod could 

 I succeed in making him relax his hold. On another angling 

 excursion, in the neighbourhood of Cockbridge on the Ellen, I 

 discovered an urchin's nest, evidently of recent construction. 

 Externally the material used was the last year's leaves and stems 

 of Carex paliidosa, which must have been bitten off by the animal 

 and carried about two hundred yards, from the very opposite end 

 of the meadow, where a large patch of ground was covered by the 

 sedge referred to. On opening the nest, I was surprised to discover 

 the mother urchin in the very act of parturition. What funny 

 looking little things the infant hedgehogs are ! The skins are of 

 deep pinky red, having only the rudiments of prickles perceptible 

 in fine silky hairs of snowy whiteness. Carefully replacing the 

 covering of the nest, I took my leave of "the lady in the straw." 



While sojourning among the fells, I have come upon few traces 

 of the Otter. Though the animal is met with in the Lakes, I 

 never saw a living specimen in any of the mountain tributaries of 

 UUswater, or in any other of the lakes which I have visited. I 

 conclude, therefore, that he prefers the lower- and less-impetuously 

 running reaches of the rivers of Cumberland. 



The Shrews, in common with the Hedgehog and other animals, 

 have in byegone days been the objects of aversion and active 

 persecution from the vulgar, owing to the baneful properties 

 attributed to them by superstitious ignorance. They were supposed 

 by our rustic forefathers to paralyse the limbs of cattle by merely 

 creeping over them ; and their bite was held to be venomous, if 

 not incurable. Whether these extraordinary fallacies took their 

 origin from the fact that cats, though they kill the shrew indiscrimi- 

 nately with the domestic mouse, leave the carcases of the former 

 untasted, I cannot affirm. Of the Common Shrew it is not my 

 purpose to make any remarks ; but I am anxious to state a few 

 facts that have come under my personal notice with regard to the 

 Water Shrew, Sorex fodiens, respecting which much doubt seems 



