66 MAMMALIA. 



Family SORICID^. 



BLARINA BREVICAUDA (Say) Baird. 



Short-tailed Shrew. 



The Short-tailed Shrew is, I presume, the most abundant of the 

 insectivorous mammals that occur in the Adirondack Mountains, and 

 is found alike in the dense coniferous forests of the interior, and the 

 cleared and settled districts of the surrounding region. 



It seeks its food both by day and by night ; and, although the 

 greater part of its life is doubtless spent underground, or at least under 

 logs and leaves, and amongst the roots of trees and stumps, it 

 occasionally makes excursions upon the surface, and I have met and 

 secured many specimens in broad daylight. 



It subsists upon beechnuts, insects, earth-worms, slugs, sow-bugs, 

 and mice, and can in no way be considered as other than a friend to 

 the farmer. Its burrows are so small that their presence near the 

 roots of plants could hardly prove injurious. 



In the selection of its haunts it .seems to show a preference for the 

 neighborhood of half-decayed logs, under and within which much of 

 its food is procured. It is also pretty sure to find and undermine old 

 planks and boards that have been left on the ground, and I have 

 captured it under a stone walk. While it is common on the dry 

 ground immediately bordering swamps and streams, I have never 

 known it either to enter the water, or to cross over wet places. It 

 does not appear to be as abundant in those portions of the forest 

 that are covered exclusively with coniferous evergreens, as in the 

 vicinity of hard-wood ridges and groves. This is probably due. partly 

 to the nature of the food supply, and pardy to its fondness for travel- 

 lino- under the layer of dead and decomposing leaves that covers the 

 ground in our deciduous forests. 



The rigors of our northern winters seem to have no effect in 

 diminishing its activity, for it scampers about on the snow during the 

 severest weather, and I have known it to be out when the thermome- 



