COMMON SHREW. 145 



and which may also have been in some measure the cause 

 of the ancient prejudice concerning its supposed power 

 of inflicting injury by the mere contact of its body. 

 Thus, in Edward Philips's " World of Words," it is stated 

 that the Shrew Mouse is " a kind of Field Mouse of the 

 bigness of a Rat and colour of a Weasel, very mischievous 

 to cattel ; which going over a beast's back, will make it 

 lame in the chine ; and the bite of it causes the beast to 

 swell at the heart and die." 



The superstitions of olden times are now fast fading 

 from among us, like the ignited vapours of unwholesome 

 bogs before the approach of day. The time can scarcely 

 be far distant when even the existence of those which 

 now remain will be matter of mere tradition, and offer 

 many a subject of curious investigation to the .antiquaries 

 of succeeding ages ; and many animals which, like the 

 Shrew and the Hedgehog, are now the dread of the 

 ignorant, and are destroyed from mistaken notions of 

 their being directly or indirectly injurious to mankind, 

 will be suffered to live on, and fulfil the beneficial offices 

 which some of them at least confer upon us, by the 

 destruction of creatures more noxious than themselves. 

 The prejudices just alluded to, however, are still rife in 

 many parts of the country ; and the Shrew is yet believed 

 to produce lameness by running over the foot, and dis- 

 ease to any part of an animal by the same means. The 

 use of the ancient antidote to these imagined injuries 

 has now probably passed away : it consisted in the 

 application of a twig of a Shrew-ash, of the preparation 

 of which Gilbert White gives the following amusing 

 account : 



" At the south corner of the plestor, or area, near the 

 church, there stood about twenty years ago, a very old 

 grotesque hollow pollard-ash, which for ages had been 



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