82 MAMMALIA OF INDIA. 
FAMILY SORECIDA. 
Small animals, which from their size, shape, and nocturnal habits are 
frequently confounded with rats and mice, as in the case of the common 
Indian Shrew, known to most of us as the Musk-rat ; they have distinct 
though small eyes, distinct ears, the conch of which is like that of a 
mouse. ‘The tail ¢/#ick and tapering, whence the generic name Pachyura, 
applied by De Selys Longchamp, and followed latterly by Blyth ; but 
there is also a sub-family of bats to which the term has been applied. 
“On each flank there is a band of stiff closely-set bristles, from between 
which, during the rutting season, exudes an odorous fluid, the product 
of a peculiar gland” (Cuzier); the two middle superior incisors are 
hooked and dentated at the base, the lower ones slanted and elongated ; 
five small teeth follow the larger incisors on the upper jaw, and two 
those on the lower. There are three molars with sharp-pointed cusps 
in each jaw, with a small tuberculous tooth in the upper. The feet 
are five-toed, separate, not webbed like the moles; the snout is long 
and pointed and very mobile. 
This family has been subdivided in various genera by naturalists, 
each one having his followers ; and it is puzzling to know which to adopt. 
Simplicity being the great point to aim at in all these matters, I may 
broadly state that Shrews are divided into land and water shrews 
(Sorex and Hydrosorex); the former includes Cvocdura of Wagner, 
Corsira of Gray, and Anurosorex of Milne-Edwards, the latter Crossopus 
and Chimarrogale, Gray. 
For ages both in the West and East this poor little amimal has been 
the victim of ignorance. In England, even in the last century, it was 
looked upon as an evil thing, as Gilbert White says: “It is supposed 
that a shrew-mouse is of so baneful and deleterious a nature that wher- 
ever it creeps over a beast, be it horse, cow, or sheep, the suffering 
animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, and threatened with loss of the 
use of the limb,” the only remedy in such cases being the application of 
the twigs of a shrew ash, which was an ash-tree into which a large hole 
had been bored with an augur, into which a poor little shrew was thrust 
alive and plugged up (sce Brand’s ‘Popular Antiquities’ for a description 
of the ceremonies). It is pleasant to think that such barbarities have 
now ceased, for though shrew ashes are to be found in various parts of 
England, I have never heard (in my own county, Derbyshire, at least) 
of the necessity for their use. In an article I contributed to a magazine 
some thirteen years ago, I pointed out a coincident superstition pre- 
vailing in India. Whilst marching as a Settlement officer in the 
district of Seonee, I noticed that one of my camels had a sore back and 
— 
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