THE COMMON SHREW 95 



hibernate. It is probable that a spell of snowy weather is 

 quite the best time for trapping them/ and during the great 

 frost of 1895, when snow remained so long upon the ground, 

 Mr G. H. Caton Haigh constantly caught both this and the 

 smaller kind. Sim's "composite" species was seen by one of 

 his informants to take shelter under a small patch of snow on the 

 summit of Ben Muich Dhui, and I have examined specimens 

 taken in midwinter in Skandinavia, at which season Dr N. F. 

 Ticehurst found them quite lively. Occasionally in the cold 

 season both the present and the succeeding species enter and 

 ascend the dwelling-houses ^ of man, and they have secure 

 underground winter retreats ; but whether or no they dig them 

 for themselves, as MacGillivray thought, is not certainly proved. 

 They certainly spend much of their time in the runs and 

 burrows of mice, and their weak claws are not suitable for 

 extensive excavations. But like other mammals no better 

 equipped, they are probably capable of digging when necessary. 

 In summer they forage far afield over open country and may 

 be found in any low-growing vegetation, but in winter they 

 retire to the shelter of hedgerows, where they live largely in 

 holes, in crannies, and in cracks of walls. In such quarters, 

 by the help of the elongated and mobile snout carrying the 

 prominent nostrils at its extremity, they search out the hiber- 

 nating insects and their eggs, which, according to Professor R. 

 Collett, are their main food at that season. 



Although frequently found abroad by day, the Common 

 Shrew is probably at least equally a creature of the night. It 

 is, indeed, so voracious and its hunger so ungovernable that it 

 must work hard to satisfy the calls of its appetite. 



Its food consists largely of insects, worms, and small inverte- 

 brates generally, of which it consumes great quantities. It eats 

 molluscs, both small and big, as observed by R. F. Tomes,^ who 

 fed captives with them ; he also found the fragments of small 

 shells^ in its runs, and took the remains of a slug^ from its 

 stomach. There can be no doubt too that under pressure of 



^ See also William Evans, p. 27. 



2 Fide Millais ; Gadeau de Kerville ; J. H. Gurney, Zoologist, 1879, 123 ; according 

 to Collett, many enter the houses in Norway in autumn and winter. 



^ In Bell, ed. 2. ^ Vitrina pellucida and Zonites. ■' Agriolimax agrestis. 



