606 



NA TURA L HIS TOR Y. 



alty. Again, if a shrew touch another animal, the part touched is sure to 

 be affected with disease unless the precaution were taken to employ some 

 equally superstitious remedy. This is referred to by Gilbert White, in his 

 • Natural History of Selborne,' possibly the most celebrated book on 

 natural history ever written. "Now," says White, "a shrew-ash is an ash 

 whose twigs or branches when applied to the limbs of cattle will immedi- 

 ately relieve the pains which the beasts suffer, from the running of a shrew- 

 mouse over the foot affected ; for it is supposed that the shrew-mouse is of 



m 



Fig. 4S8. — European hedge-hog (Erinaceris europeus). 



so baneful and deleterious a nature that whenever it moves over a beast, be 

 it horse, cow. or sheep, the suffering animal is afflicted with cruel anguish, 

 and threatened with the loss of the use of the limb. Against this accident, 

 to which they were continually liable, our provident forefathers always 

 kept a shrew-ash at hand, which, when once medicated, would maintain 

 the virtue forever. A shrew-ash was made thus : into the body of the tree 

 a deep hole was bored with an auger, and a poor devoted shrew-mouse was 

 thrust in alive, and plugged in, no doubt with several quaint incantations, 

 long since forgotten." One of the shrews of southern Europe is to be 





