SOREX. 83 
on inquiring into the cause was told by the natives that a musk-rat 
(our commonest shrew) had run over him. Jerdon also remarks that in 
Southern India (Malabar) the bite of S. mwrinus is considered venomous, 
and so it is in Bengal. 
GENUS SOREX (Linn.). 
SynonyM.—Pachyura, De S. Long; 
Crocidura, Wagner. 
DESCRIPTION.—Upper front teeth 
large ; “ inferior incisors entire, or rarely 
so much as the trace of a serrated 
upper edge ;”’ between these and the 
first cutting molar four teeth as follows : 
large, small, middling, very small ; 
teeth wholly white; tail thick and Dentition of Shrew (magnified). 
tapering, with a few scattered hairs, 
some with glands secreting a pungent musky odour, some without. 
No. 125. SOREX CHRULESCENS. 
The Common Musk Shrew, better known as Musk-rat. 
Native Name.—Chachhunder, Hind. ; Sondeli, Canarese. 
Hasitat.—India generally. 
DEsCRIPTION.—Bluish gray, sometimes slightly mouse-coloured ; 
naked parts flesh-coloured. 
Size.—Head and body, 6 to 7 inches; tail 3% to 4 inches. 
This little animal is almost too well known, as far as its appearance is 
concerned, to need much description, though most erroneous ideas 
prevail about its habits. It is proverbially difficult to uproot an old-estab- 
lished prejudice ; and, though amongst my friends Ihave been fighting 
its battles for the poor little shrew for years, I doubt whether I have con- 
verted many to my opinions. Certainly its appearance and its smell go 
strongly against it—the latter especially—but even here its powers are 
greatly exaggerated. I think by this time the old fallacy of musk-rats 
tainting beer and wine in bottles by simply running over them is ex- 
ploded. When I came out in 1856 it was a common thing at the mess 
table, or in one’s own house, to reject a bottle of beer or wine, because 
it was “musk-ratty ;’ but how seldom is the complaint made now since 
country-bottled beverages are not used? Jerdon, Kellaart, and every 
Indian naturalist scouts the idea of this peculiar power to do what no 
chemist has yet succeeded in, viz., the creation of an essence subtle 
enough to pass through glass. That musky bottles were frequent for- 
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