144 SORTCID^E. 



iii the act of fighting. If two Shrews be confined in a 

 box together, a very short- time elapses before the weaker 

 is killed and partly devoured. They not only destroy 

 each other, but there is reason to believe that many of 

 them are victims to the voracity of the Mole. A friend 

 at Waltham Abbey informed us, that in a field which 

 had always before been abundantly inhabited by Shrews, 

 scarcely one was seen during the season of 1837, but 

 that a colony of Moles occupied the district, to whose 

 voracity he, with much probability, attributed the dis- 

 appearance of the Shrews. 



It has often been stated that Owls, like Cats, will kill 

 but not eat the Shrew ; and this opinion has received 

 some plausible support from the circumstance that Shrews 

 are not uncommonly found dead, with the loins pinched, 

 as if by the beak of some rapacious bird. The following 

 fact, however, shows that this notion is altogether erro- 

 neous. Mr. Turner, of the Botanic Garden at Bury 

 St. Edmunds,* on examining twenty pellets or casts of 

 the Barn Owl, taken promiscuously from a mass of them, 

 covering, to the depth of several inches, the floor of an 

 ancient retreat of a pair of those birds, found amongst 

 them the skeletons of no less than seven Shrews. We 

 have ourselves seen several bushels of refuse taken from 

 the inside of an old tree, which had been for many years 

 the abode of the Barn Owl, and amongst the numerous 

 small skulls which it contained, the most abundant ap- 

 peared to be that of the present species. There appears 

 to be more truth in the assertion of Pennant, and many 

 other writers, that " Cats will kill, but not eat the 

 Common Shrew ; " and this aversion may probably arise 

 from the rank musky smell which this species possesses, 

 * London's Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. v. p. 727. 



