146 SORICID.E— NEOMYS 



reach. A cockchafer was evidently considered a great (in both 

 senses) prize, and she attacked it standing on three legs, one or 

 other forepaw in turn being held raised, ready for action 

 perhaps in case the victim resented being eaten piecemeal. It 

 is amusing to watch her with a large worm when the latter is 

 lively ; the encounter then becomes heroic. She does not care 

 for snails so long as the worms continue in such plenty. Of 

 these I reckon that she eats quite once and a half her own bulk 

 daily, and fully twice her own weight. The amount which 

 passes from her, consisting chiefly of the earth contained in the 

 worms, is on a correspondingly surprising scale. When 

 excited she utters a rather shrill chatter, which is always, so 

 far as I have noticed, sustained for half a minute or so, and 

 never limited to a single note. As may be expected from the 

 elongated, delicate snout, the shrews hunt their prey by scent. 

 This specimen raises its long flexible nose nearly straight up, 

 and bends it on itself rapidly from side to side, and very 

 quickly discovers the whereabouts of a worm. When yawning, 

 the flexible nose is turned considerably up — nearly to a right 

 angle with the gape, and the upper incisor teeth then show as 

 of surprising length." 



The female Water Shrew, which is about the same size as the 

 male, constructs a nursery for her young in a cavity filled with 

 moss or herbs and placed at the end of a burrow, which, like 

 the ordinary non-breeding tunnels, may have more than one 

 opening, either above or below the surface of the water. But 

 probably no one plan prevails to the exclusion of others, and 

 Mr Millais, who took the trouble to have the galleries belonging 

 to a colony dug out, found them to constitute a very elaborate 

 system. 



The young, which usually number from five to eight, 

 make their appearance after a period of gestation, computed 

 by Blasius at about three weeks. They grow so rapidly that by 

 the time they reach the age of five or six weeks they are able 

 to cater for themselves and to leave their mother.^ It is 

 probable that more than one litter sees the light each summer, 

 the first in May or June and the last in September, on the 5th 

 of which month Mr Rope^ caught a large pregnant female. 



^ Blasius. ^ Zoologist, 1900, 477. 



