SHREWS 



and it was made thus : a deep hole was bored 

 into the ash-tree, a shrew was then caught and 

 still living was pushed into the hole, which was 

 plugged up, leaving the unfortunate little 

 creature to die. The tree had for evermore all 

 sorts of virtues and would cure many ills. 

 If a horse, cow, or sheep was suffering from 

 the ' cruel anguish ' caused by a shrew having 

 run over it, a touch from a twig of the tree 

 that had been treated in this way would at 

 once relieve it ! In these days we can hardly 

 understand how people could ever have be- 

 lieved such tales, but they did believe them 

 most completely, and many a poor unfortunate 

 little shrew was corked up in a tree to die a 

 miserable death in consequence. 1 



To go back to my shrew: it stood and 

 hesitated for a moment, then it darted away, 

 racing round and exploring its new quarters. 

 It smelt here and there, its little sensitive 

 snout quivering all the time, then it dived 

 under the moss, whence it brought out a 

 worm that had been intended for a frog, ate 

 it, and dived under the moss again. There it 

 discovered the hiding-place of a ' mud frog ' 

 (a small fat foreigner), but what it did to it I 



1 G, E. H. Barrett-Hamilton, British Mammals, p. 102. 



77 



