WATER SHREW 29 



WATER SHREW. 



CROSSOPUS FODIENS (Pallas). 



With us the Water Shrew is widely, though somewhat 

 locally, distributed, but is nowhere abundant. I have records 

 of its occurrence during the last four or five years in several 

 parts of East Lothian and Midlothian ; also in Linlithgow- 

 shire, Stirlingshire, Peeblesshire, and Fifeshire, and it has 

 been observed by Dr Hardy to enter his own house at Old- 

 cambus, Berwickshire (" Proc. Berw. Nat. Club," viii., p. 527). 

 Through the attention of the Messrs Campbell, I have 

 recently had opportunities of examining several in the flesh, 

 captured both in summer and winter in Dalmeny Park, and 

 have found them all to be more or less of the typical form 

 with the light underparts, which is the common form in the 

 more inland localities also. Mr Bruce has taken it in 

 the grounds of Colinton House, at a considerable distance 

 from water. One found dead by my children on the path 

 close to the Braid burn at Greenbank farm, on 10th July 

 1890, was of the variety with the dark underparts the Sorex 

 remifer of MacGillivray's " British Quadrupeds." I have 

 obtained several by means of the " Cyclone " traps baited 

 with cheese. 



Alston (Scottish Mammalia, p. 10) gives the credit of 

 adding the Water Shrew to the Scottish list to Dr Secular of 

 Glasgow. As long ago, however, as 1808 it was known to 

 Patrick Neill as an inhabitant of the Esk at Habbie's Howe, 

 near Carlops (vide his list of animals and plants, contributed to 

 the 1808 edition of Allan Ramsay's "Gentle Shepherd," vol. i., 

 p. 269) ; and in 1812 Fleming, in his " Contributions to the 

 British Fauna," published in the Wernerian Society's 



