86 SORICID^— SOREX 



Distribution : — Shrews of the present type are found throughout 

 arctic, boreal, and transitional Europe and Asia, from sea-level to at 

 least 6000 feet (Blasius) ; and from Great Britain to the Sea of Okhotsk 

 (where the representative is 6". biixtoni of Allen, described from Gichiga), 

 as well as in Sakhalin and Hokkaido (representative, 6". diphceonodon of 

 Thomas). In Norway they are, perhaps, the commonest of all mammals 

 right up to the snow-line on the mountains (Collett), and range from 

 the extreme north (71° 10' N. lat), together with corresponding latitudes 

 in arctic Russia, southwards to beyond the Pyrenees, middle Italy, 

 Hungary, PTurkey, PGreece, and northern Caucasus ; but exact details 

 are wanting for Asia, and even for southern Europe, where Sorex tends 

 to be replaced by Crocidm^a, as is the case in the Mediterranean islands, 

 in Asia Minor, and in northern Africa. vS. nraneiis has only recently 

 been proved to occur in Spain, although often wrongly reported 

 and evidently confounded with Cabrera's Neoniys anomaliis. It 

 is represented in Alaska by S. pribilofensis of Merriam, of the Pribiloff 

 Islands, Bering's Sea ; and in North America by the closely related 

 5. ricJiardsoni of inexactly known distribution in boreal zones from 

 Ontario and Wisconsin, westwards to Alberta, and north to Great Bear 

 Lake (Thompson Seton). That it crosses the arctic circle in Siberia is 

 proved by Dobson's specimens from the Khatanga and Olenek rivers 

 mentioned in Proc. Zool. Soc. (London), 1891, 350. 



The Common Shrew is numerous throughout the mainland of Great 

 Britain to the extreme north of Scotland (Kinnear, Ann. Scott. Nat. 

 Hist., 1907, 49), as well as in Anglesey, Bardsey, whence Coward has 

 sent me specimens, Wight, and Jersey (Bunting). It frequents every 

 kind of locality from sea-level probably to the summits of the mountains, 

 e.g., to 1300 feet in Yorkshire (Clarke and Roebuck), and at least 1500 

 feet in Cheshire (Coward and Oldham). It is absent from Ireland, 

 Man, Lundy, the Outer Hebrides and Orkneys, where 5, minutus is 

 alone found ; but, despite statements to the contrary, it is present and 

 often common on many of the Inner Hebrides, such as Islay (W. 

 Evans, Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist., 1905, 116; Russell, Zoologist, 1910, 

 113) and Jura, from which last I have examined specimens procured 

 respectively by W. Evans and the late Henry Evans. It is common in 

 Arran and Mull (Alston), occurs in Skye (Buxton, Zoologist, 1908, 189) 

 and Bute (Boyd Watt), and doubtless frequents many of the smaller 

 islands. It is doubtful if any shrew is found on the Shetlands, and the 

 species said to occur on lona (see Lydekker, also Harvie-Brown and 

 Buckley) has not been identified. 



Distribution in time : — Soi^ex araneus first appears in Britain in the 

 latest Pleistocene deposits, e.g., those of the Ightham Fissures, Kent, 

 and the Dog Holes Cave, Warton Crag, Lancashire. It has been 

 recorded from several older horizons, but Hinton's recent study of the 



