Common Shrew 



j. Florida Brown Shrew. B. floridana Merriam. Rather larger, 



with narrower skull and white teeth. 

 Range. Tropical Florida. 



Common Shrew 



Sorex personatus Geoffrey 

 Called also Long-tailed Shrew, Shrew Mouse, 



Length. 3.75 inches. 



Description. Small and slender, with a long-pointed snout sup- 

 porting long "whiskers." Tail nearly as long as the head 

 and body. Colour dark-brown above, hairs slaty at their 

 base, brighter on the rump, and shading gradually to gray 

 on the underside. (Illustration facing p. 120.) 



Range. Canada to Indiana and southern New Jersey, and in the 

 Alleghanies to North Carolina. A somewhat similar shrew 

 is found in the low ground in North Carolina and several 

 others in the North. (See below). 



The common shrew or shrew mouse is a smaller and much 

 more attractive little animal than the short-tailed shrew. The 

 smaller varieties are easily the smallest of our quadrupeds; a 

 common mouse looks overgrown and clumsy beside one of them. 



Shrew mice are active throughout the winter, skipping about 

 over the surface of the snow from tree to tree, poking their 

 delicate, proboscis-like noses into crevices of the bark, and in- 

 vestigating the dark interiors of hollow trees at the bottoms of 

 which they have to root about in the crumbling wood and 

 vegetable mould for their accustomed prey. 



Underneath wood piles and logs are favourite haunts of these 

 funny little beasts, and I believe that it is in such places as 

 these that they bring up their families. Both in winter and 

 summer they appear to prefer the neighbourhood of such little 

 streams as neither freeze nor become stagnant at either season. 



Like all of the tribe of insect eaters this little shrew finds 

 the summer drought the most disastrous season of the year; at 

 such times many of them perish, evidently from thirst. 



I have never had an opportunity of observing their method 

 of hunting in warm weather. All the living specimens that I 

 have found, except in winter, were crouching beneath old boards 



184 



