to exist. Not long since I saw it stated in a local print, by a 

 Natural History contributor, that this most elegant and interesting 

 little creature was of a che'^tnut (!) colour. Mr. W. Kinsey Dover, 

 in an appendix to the latest issue of 'yenkinsorCs Guide to the Lake 

 District, mentions tlie Water Shrew as scarce. My experience 

 tends in quite a contrary direction ; for whether stationed at 

 Aspatria, Frizington, or Watermillock, during the last fifty years, I 

 have ever found them in respectable numbers. True it is that 

 their haunts lie out of the way of ordinary observers, and hence 

 possibly misconception has arisen. They are entirely aquatic in 

 their habits, and in droughty seasons, such as those of 1859 and 

 1868, suffered severely from the drying up of little rills or water- 

 brooks. Instead of being rufous or chestnut coloured, their fur is 

 of the glossiest black above and white beneath, the colours being 

 abruptly separated ; the under surface of the tail is fringed with 

 stiff white hairs. Their motions, whether on land or in water, are 

 elegant and inconceivably rapid. They swim and dive with the 

 utmost dexterity. During the summer of 1842, I had almost daily 

 evidence of their extraordinary evolutions in an artificial pond 

 which was formed by damming up a little brook that flowed 

 through my garden. Here a brood of five in number, accompanied 

 by their parents, used to disport themselves with unmistakeable 

 delight. When the sun shone out brightly, their glossy submerged 

 coats glistened like frosted silver — arising, I am informed, from the 

 innumerable bubbles of air that cover their velvety coats. Their 

 watery gambols strikingly reminded the spectator of those of a 

 brood of ducklings at play. Nor is their gamesomeness confined 

 to the water. In 1876, while botanising on the Frizington Parks 

 estate, I was an interested spectator of their frolics on terra firma. 

 Here again the family consisted of five members, exclusive of the 

 parents. At the termination of a drain, where it emptied into an 

 open water-course, was the entrance to their burrow. The field 

 was in grass at the time, and depastured with cattle. In a semi- 

 circle round their hole were a number of grass-covered runs, 

 artistically arranged with the view apparently of forming a first-class 

 recreation ground. A number of paths, wide enough only to 



