194 MAMMALS OF PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY. 



the subject of this article far outnumbers any other species of native mammal 

 found in eastern North America. Like other members of its family it is in- 

 sectivorous, depending almost wholly on animal food for subsistence, and with 

 its near kinsman the mole, which it greatly resembles, is supposed to feed 

 principally on worms. 



It belongs to the genus Blarina, or short-tailed shrews, distinguished from 

 the typical shrew of the genus Sorex by the abbreviated tail, and by slight 

 differences in the structure of the skull and teeth. There are four or five 

 species of these short-tailed or mole shrews in the eastern United States, but 

 all yield in point of size, numbers, and universality of distribution to 

 Blarina brevicauda. A full-grown specimen is about five inches long, less 

 than one inch of this being devoted to the tail. The shape of the body and 

 head, the character of the fur and the apparent absence of eyes suggests the 

 mole, and many people undoubtedly confound the two, but an examination of 

 the feet shows a decided difference, those of the shrew being shaped and 

 placed more as in the mice, and the shrew never attains more than half the 

 bulk of a full-grown mole. 



It is to the tmderground habits of so many of our small mammals that we 

 must charge much of our ignorance of this interesting class of creatures. 

 Add to this the fact that their chief period of activity is at nightfall, and the 

 wonder ceases. There are, however, means of getting at many of the secrets 

 of their little lives, and it is surprising how much one can unearth by the 

 judicious use of a few mouse- traps in the nearest bit of wild land, or even in 

 one's own garden or lawn. Turn over fallen logs, boards, fence-rails, and 

 stones, scratch among fallen patches of leaves or high grass, part the tussocks 

 in the meadow or the sphagnum in some deep, shady bog, and ten to one, 

 the first thing you are likely to catch in the intricate and innumerable run- 

 ways and burrows that thread these places is Biarina brevicauda. Be it 

 mountain or valley, forest or plain, rocky or sandy, wet or dry, hot or cold, 

 in season and out of season, the professional mouse-trapper over the entire 

 country from Hudson's Bay to the Carolinas, and from the Mississippi to the 

 Atlantic Ocean, first, last, and all the time, expects to be bored with a super- 

 fluity of mole shrews. From the point of view of a respectable native mouse 

 there cannot exist a more pestiferous busy-body, free-booter and cannibal 

 than a Blarina. There is only one way of escaping his intrusions, and that 

 is to climb a tree, but not one mouse in ten can do that. Some of the most 

 valuable catches 1 ever made along a line of traps bear the tooth marks of 

 this ferocious little meat-eater. Other specimens are often completely de- 

 voured, and often they devour each other. Confined in a vessel with much 

 larger and more agile species than themselves they quickly vent their spleen 

 at the restraint by persistently hounding their companions to death, and de- 

 vouring them. In this way one of these shrews is stated by John Morden, of 



