TOOTHLESS ANT-EATERS 265 



which stick to it, and are finally returned with it into the mouth. This 

 goes on over and over again, until the appetite is satisfied; and a])par- 

 ently the diet is excellent, for the ant-eater is generally fat, and indeed 

 his hams are appreciated as a delicacy for their peculiar flavor, into 

 which that of formic acid ohtained from the ant is said to enter. 



The Elephant Shrews. — The elephant shrews are found in 

 Africa. The snout is prolonged into a kind of proboscis, which 

 accounts for the popular name. The hind-legs are more developed 

 than the fore-limbs, and they advance by a succession of leaps, just 

 resembling the jerboas, and causing some writers to call them jumping 

 shrews. The common elephant shrew, from South Africa, is a.bout 

 eight inches long, of which the tail takes up three inches. The color 

 is tawny-brown, becoming whitish on the limbs. It is active by day, 

 and lives in burrows, to which it retreats on being disturbed. There 

 are several other species. 



The shrews constitute a numerous family of mouse-like or rat- 

 like creatures, spread over the Old World and North America. The 

 snout is long and pointed, the body mouse-like, and the tail thick and 

 tapering, and more or less densely set with hairs. Many of them are 

 furnished with glands which secrete a strong-smelling fluid. 



The Common Shrew is about two and three-quarter inches 

 long-, with a tail rather more than one and one-half inches. It feeds on 

 insects, w'orms, small snails and slugs; and it is ])reyed upon by barn 

 owls and weasels. It is said a cat will kill but not eat them, owing 

 to their strong-smelling glands. In the autumn great numbers of 

 these little creatures are found dead, without apparent injury, on roads 

 and footpaths in the country — probably starved. 



Some old superstitions still linger around the shrew, which is, or 

 was till very recently, credited with causing cattle to fall lame if it 

 ran over their backs, while its bite made them "swell at the heart and 

 die." The only cure was to stroke the part affected or bitten with a 

 twig from a shrew-ash — that is, an ash-tree, into which a hole had 

 been bored with an auger, and a shrew plugged up alive in the hole. 



