THE PYGMY OR LESSER SHREW 117 



it remained until recently one of the least known of our 

 terrestrial mammals, excepting only certain species of bats. 

 All the earlier writers, such as Pennant, Bingley, Donovan, 

 Fleming, Bell,^ and MacGillivray enumerate but two species of 

 shrew, of which one was the Water, the other a composite 

 species compounded of the Common and Pygmy Shrews. The 

 truth had escaped the notice of Jenyns, one of the wisest of early 

 British mammalogists, when he wrote his Manual^ but eventu- 

 ally he recognised two terrestrial species, the smaller of which 

 he characterised as Sorex rusticus. No other course was 

 possible under the circumstances, since there was at that time 

 no available means of comparing British with continental 

 specimens. At the same time Jenyns bestowed upon an Irish 

 specimen the name of Sorex hibernicus, but his description, 

 having been evidently based upon a comparison of an Irish 

 Pygmy with an English Common Shrew, was founded upon 

 insufficient basis, as he himself eventually admitted. It was 

 left to Blasius in 1857 to express the conviction that the 5. 

 ritsticus of Jenyns was identical with the kS. pygmceus of Pallas, 

 a conviction verified by the editors of Bell's second edition, 

 who, by the kindness of the late Professor Alfred Newton, were 

 enabled to examine Jenyns's typical specimen, presented by 

 him to the University Museum of Zoology at Cambridge. 

 Later researches have shown the probable identity of Pallas's 

 S. pygmcEus with the ^. viinutus of Linnaeus, and the latter is 

 accordingly the correct technical name for the Pygmy Shrew. 



Even of late years our knowledge of this tiny species has 

 accumulated very slowly, and it only took its place in Bell's 

 second edition by the medium of a single sheet, written by 

 E. R. Alston, and issued after the completion of the rest of the 

 work. But, only a few years previously, Alston, judging by a 

 note which he wrote in 1865^ on the subject, seems to have 

 been uncertain about it. Its name was absent from reputable 

 local faunas of so late a date as Mr H. E. Forrest's Shropshire 

 (1899), George Sim's Dee (1903), and Mr David Bruce's 

 Mmnmalia of Caithness (1907). It was only added to the 

 Fauna of Staffordshire in 1885, of the Edinburgh district in 



^ First edition. 2 Zoologist, 1865, 9430. 



